​If you asked me to count to 100, the numbers wouldn’t line up neatly.
They flow. They arc left and right, forward and back, like a treasure map.
I never thought much of it until a few years ago, when I felt the nudge to write it out.
Seeing it on paper made me pause.
Was something in my brain different?
Was this meaning… something?
I showed a few people, quietly measuring how strange it might seem. Wondering whether it was a function or a flaw.
It led me to notice how my mind moves.
It loops. It traces.
It doesn’t move in straight lines; it moves in patterns.
And yet, I am also grounded in logic and reason.
Now I find myself less interested in explaining it…
and more willing to simply watch,
the world as it speaks to me in patterns. 
Because it isn’t just in numbers.
I see them in people. I see them in nature. 
I always have.
I learned, years ago, to read subtle shifts, tone, timing, and the seasons of a mood.
Not because I wanted to, but because I needed to.
Pattern became protection.
If I could map it, I could survive it.
If I could anticipate it, I could soften the impact.
So I did.
And I got very good at it.
But that part of me never turned off.
She’s still here,
still scanning,
still trying to complete what feels incomplete.
Sometimes it shows up as a person or situation I can’t quite let go of,
not because of any significance,
but because of the loop it left behind.
An incomplete rhythm.
A pattern without resolution.
And my mind, in all its brilliance, wants to close it.
But what I’m learning, as I live more Untucked,
is that not every pattern is mine to finish.
Some are meant to be witnessed…
and released.
I’m still learning how to let logic gently remind the loop:
this isn’t yours to carry.
It’s harder than it sounds.
And then there are the quieter patterns
unexpected, almost sacred.
The way light touches the sauna window, forming the same shape each time. Two hands meeting, like a heart.
A slight shift, and it becomes a flower.
I could dismiss it.
Call it coincidence.
Call it nothing.
But it doesn’t feel like nothing.
It feels like a reminder
that my mind is as analytical as it is imaginative,
not just observant, but creative,
not just protective, but deeply attuned.
I don’t just see what is.
I see what could be formed from it.
I’m learning to hold this part of me with care.
Not silencing what sees so much,
but living alongside it.
Letting it notice, without asking it to solve.
Letting it feel, without asking it to carry.
Because I am no longer living a life where I need to survive by pattern.
I am living a life where I can choose presence.
And maybe the gift was never just in seeing the patterns.
Maybe the gift
is knowing I can step out of them.

The Little Girl Who Remembered Her Way Home
​
Something that you don't see every day
A little girl who found her way
Through a world that's designed to break
All of your dreams --Free Me by Joss Stone

These lyrics have lived in me since the moment I heard them many years ago. But when I think of them now, they hit differently than they did when I was 39. Little did I know that even just one year later, a shift would begin to take place that would change everything.
A shift that was, at times, dark and isolating, yet nonetheless one that moved me in ways I couldn’t imagine at the time.
When I look back at who I was then, I see a woman managing her life, holding it all together, doing what needed to be done.
But in all that managing…
there was a slow, quiet deterioration of my soul.
At 40, the wake-up calls began to come.
And I handled those too.
But if I’m being honest, I wasn’t really paying attention.
My life had become a series of quiet negotiations:
If I can just get past this…
If I can just fix this…
If I can just make it through this…
Work.
Finances.
Family.
Health.
Marriage.
I was determined to handle it all like a true FIO.
Oh yes, I prayed, but honestly, I don’t think I truly gave it over to God.
So when, at age 50, I left my marriage with very little to my name after dropping to my knees and asking for courage, I truly gave it over.
And that was the beginning of becoming Untucked.
It was through healing a lifetime of tucking myself away that I began to reconnect with my soul.
The deepest place within me.
My truest self.
And I won’t pretend otherwise, this work is lonely.
No one else can do it for you.
There is no checklist.
No timeline.
Only the willingness to meet yourself there.
And so today, as I continue this return,
I find myself asking:
How do we come home to ourselves, not by going backward,
but by remembering forward?
How do we shed what was never ours to reclaim what always was?
There comes a moment when you realize you have stepped outside the story you were taught to live.
And what remains…
is her.
The little girl
who felt the Divine not as something to reach for,
but something she lived within.
Like a seed buried deep in darkness, what is most true about us sometimes disappears for a time,
not lost, just waiting.
Waiting for the right breaking open.
Waiting for the light.
The world has a way of making us feel the
“shoulds” one quiet compromise after another
until we forget the sound of our own soul.
And yet…
nothing is ever wasted.
Every detour, every misstep, every moment of misalignment
becomes part of the path that leads us back.
Even the shame
It was placed gently, sometimes unconsciously,
into hands too small to understand it.
“You are not enough.”
“You must be more.”
But none of it was ever true.
And yet, God never left.
Not in the forgetting.
Not in the distance.
Not even in the choices that pulled you further from yourself.
There is a love
that does not keep score,
that does not turn away.
It simply waits with infinite patience for the moment you remember.
And when you do, you begin to see it all differently.
The people who appeared at just the right time.
The moments that shook you awake.
The feeling that something bigger was calling you forward.
It was always leading you here.
Back to her.
Back to truth.
Back to God within you.
You were never meant for the world’s narrow thinking, its shame-based systems, or its quiet insistence that you shrink to belong.
You belong to something far more vast.
Far more loving.
And that joy you feel now, that quiet, rising excitement about what God has placed before you.
That is your compass.
That is your remembering.
That is the little girl,
finally home.

This week, we’ve had several days of rain here in Kansas City. And even though it’s been an overcast week, I notice how vibrant the colors are becoming. Small pockets of green buds now sprinkle the hillside across from my home, a view I’ve held for three years now.
​Just outside my front door, a small nest rests in my wreath. A mother house finch quietly guards five eggs, just as she did this same time last year.
Five eggs then.
Five eggs now.
As part of my morning prayer and meditation, I opened Untucked and landed on Wings of Spring—a reflection I wrote during this very season. At the end, I ask:
What is currently unfolding in your life that you can’t yet see fully formed? Where might you be encouraged to trust your own wings?
I, sitting in a place of wondering what’s next, had to smile. Opening my own book at random brought me an answer. Or at least, a message.
God does not always speak in clarity.
Sometimes He speaks in patterns.
In repetition.
In gentle return.
And here I am again standing in the in-between.
Between ideas and action.
Between what I can plan… and what I must surrender.
All around me, nature is doing what it has always done.
The trees are filling in without strategizing their leaves.
The birds are building and waiting, without publicizing.
The rain is falling without asking permission.
Nothing is rushed or forced.
And nothing is wasted.
Nature reminds me of this often: just be with it, and everything else will follow.
I’ll admit, my habits of accomplishing and achieving run deep. But the more Untucked I live, the more willing I am to loosen my grip.
If it is meant for me, it will not pass me by.
I don’t need to have all the answers right now.
I can follow the quiet wisdom of nature.
As we step into April and the gentle unfolding of Nature Heals, I invite you to look around at what is quietly growing in your own life.
What is forming beneath the surface?
What feels uncertain, yet alive?
You don’t have to force the answers or rush the process.
Just notice.
Just be with it.
And trust… that what is meant to bloom will.
April’s Prayer~
God,
Help me to trust what I cannot yet see.
Remind me that nothing growing is ever wasted.
And guide me gently, in Your time, toward what is mine to become.
Peace be with you,
J~

I was five years old, standing on the bench seat of my dad’s pickup truck, looking out the back window, when a song came on the radio.
I didn’t understand everything about life yet, but I understood the story and it made me cry.
That song was "Wildfire" by Michael Martin Murphey, and ever since, music has been the place where words have found me first.
I think of my life as a soundtrack. Certain songs relate to specific seasons of my life, but more often, a specific lyric speaks to me. A lyric that, when heard, travels deep to my soul and lives there forever.
This project has been on my mind for several years now. I thought it would be fun to highlight specific lyrics from songs that touch my soul. I decided to take it a step further and shape those lines into a poem; into a story.
I pulled out my collection of records, CDs, and downloads and started going through the songs, deciding which lyrics I would begin with. That turned out to be quite a task. There are so many songs that I love and so many lyrics that live in me.
For example, Prince and The Doors are two of my favorites, yet I didn’t include either. I could have easily chosen lyrics from their songs, but what I was really looking for were the lines that connect on a deeper level. The lyrics that hit me and stay, repeating in my mind like an earworm long after the song ends.
After weeks of combing my music library I landed on 75 songs and about 1,600 words and began organizing them into categories. In the end, I was left with 45 songs and 708 words shaped into a poem. Meant to be read out loud. 
The Soundtrack to My Life.
This project was deeply personal to me. While the lyrics may not make sense to you, I hope it inspires you to think about how certain words shape your own life, whether they are spoken to you or discovered in a song.
Words matter.
Choose them wisely.
 
The Soundtrack to My Life
The Questioning:
Life is a waterfall
We're one in the river
And one again after the fall.
Open me up and you will see
I'm a gallery of broken hearts.
I'm beyond repair, let me be
Crawling in my skin
These wounds, they will not heal.
Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
And I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
What the hell am I doing here
I wanna be somewhere else
Normal and free, like I used to be
She looks just like me, but I don't recognize her
She's got the same eyes, but they're heavy and tired.
When did I start to forget
How did I start to believe
You weren't sufficient for me?

The Ache:
I'm not anything like I used to be
Although it's true
I still remember that girl
I know the pieces fit
'Cause I watched them tumble down
No fault, none to blame
It doesn't mean I don't desire
To point the finger, blame the other
Birthright, I'm standing in silence
Holding on for dear life
Ignorant to my compliance
You don't need to bother
I don't need to be
What I really meant to say
Is I'm sorry for the way I am
I wrapped your love around me like a chain
 
The Turning:
There is a balance between two worlds
One with an arrow and one with a cross
Maybe my heart's trying to give me a hint
Maybe it's time I start listening in
One more time around (I might make it)
The day I tried to live
So when weakness turns my ego up
Bring me to life
I've been livin' a lie
Bittersweet summer rain
I'm born again
All my broken pieces

The Fight:
I am realizin'
That everybody's lost their simple ways
And now that it's here, I see it, oh, so clearly
I've come face to face with the enemy
I have had enough
Walk away before I finish what you started
Face to face, I will push you in your place
And yet I find, and yet I find
Repeating in my head
Fear, he is a liar
He will take your breath
God only knows what you've been through
But there's a kind of love that God only knows
Made my skin a little bit thicker
Makes me that much stronger
Makes me that much wiser

The Becoming:
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime
There's so much left to learn, and no one left to fight
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Something that you don't see every day
A little girl who found her way
Through a world that's designed to break
All of your dreams
And I'm, coming back to who I am
Feelin' like a ten, the best I've ever been
Oh, there's a river that winds on forever
I'm gonna see where it leads
Oh, there's a mountain that no man has mounted
I'm gonna stand on the peak
There's so much I wanna say
So much I wanted you to know
When I finally make it home
I've still got joy in chaos
I've got peace that makes no sense
Love reign o'er me, rain on me, rain on me
When you're my age
You'll still be full of questions
But I bet love will still be making the world go round
And I have felt the pain of losing who you are
And I have died so many times, but I am still alive
This is not the end of me, this is the beginning
 
Freedom:
I’m not afraid
Everything is Holy Now
So why would I make a bed in my shame
When a fountain of grace is running my way
I just want to celebrate another day of livin'
I just want to celebrate another day of life
Lift me up so high
That I cannot fall
Lift me up when I'm falling
Lift me up and keep me from drowning again
To hear my quiet voice, just be still and know
In every sacred silence I’m only a whisper away
A new song for me to sing
Tell the world how I feel inside
Even though it might cost me everything
 
Credits:
The preceding words are not my words. They come from the songs/artists listed in order:
The Questioning:
Aerial—System Of A Down
Be Okay—Ingrid Michaelson
Crawling—Linkin Park
Closer to Fine—Indigo Girls
Creep—RadioHead
Big White Room—Jessie J
Girl In the Mirror—Megan Moroney
More Than Able—Elavation Worship
The Ache:
She Used to Be Mine—Sarah Bareilles
Schism—Tool
Clouds—Jordan Rakei
Bother—Stone Sour
Cold—Crossfade (I used the acoustic version by Crispin Earl)
The Eye—Brandi Carlile
The Turning:
Cumbersome—Seven Mary Three
Bridges Burn—Paul Otten
The Day I Tried to Live—Soundgarden
Dig—Incubus
Bring Me to Life—Evanescence
Bittersweet—Lianne La Havas
The Fight:
The Enemy—Godsmack
Stand Up—Trapt
Nutshell—Alice In Chains
Fear Is A Liar—Zach Williams
God Only Knows—for King & Country
Fighter—Christina Aguilera
The Becoming:
Lose Yourself—Eminem
Broken—Seether (featuring Amy Lee)
Landslide—Fleetwood Mac
Free Me—Joss Stone
Coming Back—Mitch King
Sorry Not Sorry—Demi Lovato
Ends of the Earth—Lord Huron
Finally Home—MercyMe
Firm Foundation—Cody Carnes
Love, Reign O’er Me—The Who
When You’re My Age—Lori McKenna
I Believe—Christina Perri
Freedom:
Not Afraid—Eminem
Holy Now—Peter Mayer
Made for More—Josh Baldwin
I Just Want to Celebrate—Rare Earth
Flood—Jars of Clay
Lean Into Me—Stefan Mitchell
Alive—P.O.D.