I Keep Reaching

I don’t start my day with everything figured out.

I don’t wake up holding it all together.

I start by reaching for help.

Reaching for coffee.

Reaching for a quiet moment before the house wakes up.

Reaching for Jesus.

And the truth is, I keep reaching all day long.

Maybe you do too.

Not because I feel sorry for myself. Not because I spend much time measuring what is fair or unfair.

I’ve simply lived enough life to know that I cannot carry all of this on my own.

For more than twenty years, foster care and adoption have been part of our family story. I have learned what it means to hold heartbreak and healing in the same hands—to love deeply while recognizing that love does not magically erase everything that came before it.

For eighteen years, disability has been part of our everyday life. Not an occasional topic. Not a cause we visit once in a while. Daily life.

It has taught me to question expectations, look for possibility, advocate when necessary, celebrate progress other people might miss, and keep learning what it means to see the person before the diagnosis.

And now I am loving the man I have shared more than three decades of life with while watching parts of the future we expected slowly change.

There are things ahead that I would not have chosen.

There are plenty of things behind me that I wouldn’t have chosen either.

Any one of those stories could probably become the thing I point to when someone asks why life is hard.

But that isn’t really the story I want to tell.

The story is that I keep reaching.

Not once.

Not just during my quiet time in the morning.

Over and over and over again.

In the middle of conversations.

In the middle of appointments.

In the middle of decisions I don’t know how to make.

In the middle of a noisy house when everyone seems to need something at the same time.

And in the quiet moments no one else ever sees.

I reach because I need Jesus for every single part of this life.

To breathe.

To walk forward.

To wake up and do it again tomorrow.

To recognize what actually matters.

To hold onto hope.

To keep my faith steady when so much around me feels like it is moving.

And maybe that is one of the things I have misunderstood about strength over the years.

Strength isn’t always standing firmly on your own two feet and announcing, “I’ve got this.”

Sometimes strength looks like knowing exactly where to reach when you don’t.

So if you ever wonder how I keep going, the answer isn’t that I am unusually strong.

I’m not.

I just keep reaching.

And again and again, I find Jesus there.

Your turn:

Finish this sentence in the comments:

“I’m reaching for ______ today.”