(A Christmas Letter for those who love us, those who judge us, and the flying monkeys who simply cannot mind their ministry)

If you’re here because you scanned the QR code on our Christmas card… welcome.
You either love us, you’re nosy, or someone sent you this saying,
“Lord have mercy, she posted WHAT?”

Whichever one you are — pull up a chair.
Hydrate emotionally.
Let me tell you a story.

🌅 A Photo, A Boy, and a Decade of Miracles

On the big milestone years, G and I do a little photoshoot together — usually him rolling his eyes and me begging for “just one more.” But this year? This year felt different. We were up on sacred ground, high above the noise, chasing the last sunlight before it dipped behind the hills.

The photographer told him, “Get in a prayer position.”

And G — my miracle boy — dropped to his knees, opened his hands, and lifted his face to the heavens.

I burst into tears.

Because somehow… impossibly…
It’s been ten years.
Ten years cancer-free.
Ten years NED — no evidence of disease.
Ten years since neuroblastoma.
Ten years since I became the sidekick to the strongest superhero I’ve ever known.

People see the miracle boy in the picture.
What they don’t see is the mother behind him — the one who learned she could do hard things long before it became a trendy mantra.

Moms become their children’s sidekicks without warning:

• memorizing every medication and dose
  
• coaxing one more blueberry or french fry for calories
  
• doing the midnight vomit cleanup
  
• tracking pee charts and chemo schedules
  
• running on fear and caffeine
  
• praying harder than they breathe
  

Looking back, I realize we were all brave — even when we didn’t feel brave.
This picture reminded me how deeply God carried us then, even when I didn’t understand He was doing it.

I wish childhood cancer had been the last mountain we had to climb.
But life had more plot twists in store.

Psalm 91:11–12

“For He will command His angels concerning you,
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands.”

🌪️ Meanwhile… Behind the Scenes of the Cancer Years

I have never written this publicly, but after ten years, I think it’s time to tell the truth with respect and clarity.

While G was fighting for his life,
I was fighting a different battle behind closed doors.

I was living with:

• subtle cruelty
  
• emotional manipulation
  
• passive-aggressive comments
  
• selective support
  
• smoke-and-mirrors behavior
  
• moments that looked like doting fatherhood from the outside
  
• and moments of deep unreliability on the inside
  

The world saw a worried dad.
I saw someone who played helpless when it was convenient.

There were days I was massively pregnant, walking miles across the Houston Medical Center, juggling two school kids, a toddler, an infant with cancer — and a husband who insisted I should “handle everything.” I thanked God, and still do, for my own dad, Paw, who stepped up and stepped in for his daughter who desperately needed support.

There were comments that cut:
“If you feed him that, you’re team cancer; you want him to die.”

Words that made me feel small:
“I need to handle the money because you’re no good with money.”
(referring to the tens of thousands of dollars donated)

Moments that made me feel alone in the hardest season of motherhood:
“I need my sleep — you can sleep in the chair and I’ll take the pull-out couch.”

I share this not for pity, but because it matters.
Because trauma doesn’t come in single servings.
Because the public version of our life was only half the truth.

And because the God who carried me then
is the same God who calls me to speak honestly now.

---

🌧️ Then Came the Lightning Strikes of 2025

Back in 2023, after Tank’s accident, I wrote a series of raw, unfiltered social media posts.
If you were here then, you remember how honest they were — trembling hands telling hard truths.
I had to remove those posts because of litigation surrounding Tank’s accident, and they remain removed due to the going-on-three-years Texas divorce case.

But for those who read them, you might remember how I began:

“How many times can one family be struck by lightning?”

Statistically?
Lightning shouldn’t strike the same place more than once.
But life — our life — seems to have missed that memo entirely.

It turns out, a family can be struck repeatedly…
in ways science can’t explain
and in ways the heart can barely hold.

And 2025 brought its own kind of lightning.
Some strikes were overt, impossible to miss.
Others were covert — the quiet kind that smolders underneath everything before you even realize you’ve been burned.

⚡ The kids’ beloved summer camps flooded

The kids’ beloved summer camps — their sanctuary, their joy, their great exhale — flooded.
Underwater.
Unrecognizable.

And in the same breath, we lost Jane Ragsdale, a fierce advocate and friend who had become a steady voice of support for my children.
Her absence was its own kind of lightning.

⚡ The Adult Behavior That Should Have Never Happened

In the middle of the kids navigating grief, disruption, and disappointment, came something I wish I could say surprised me:
gaslighting, manipulation, and bullying from grown adults.

Adults — not children — who should have offered softness, stability, or even silence…
but instead created confusion and chaos.

If you’ve walked through trauma with children, you know:
they don’t need perfection.
They need consistency, compassion, and the freedom to feel safe in their own story.

Instead, they got noise.

---

When a person moves through the world with competence in the places that matter to them, their sudden lapses elsewhere are not about ability at all.

They’re about control.
About shaping reality to suit their story.
About using inconsistency as both a shield and a weapon.

These patterns do not get to hide behind excuses.
They need to be named for what they are.
They need accountability.

The question is:
Who will hold them accountable?

---

I am asking you to protect the children.

Not the adult.
Not the narrative.
Not the image.
Not the performance or the parade.

The children.

Listen to them.
Believe them.
Support them.
See them.
Choose them.

It is the bare minimum of humanity.
And the bare minimum God requires.

Luke 17:2
“It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

Let that settle.

---

We are not the same family we were last year.
I am not the same mother I was last year.

I am stronger.
We are closer.
Fiercer.
More bonded.
More protected.
More aware.
More free.

We have endured storms that would level many families…
and yet, here we stand.
Here I am.

God carried us through cancer.
God carried us through hurricanes.
God carried me through cruelty and unjust treatment from the one who vowed before God in a little white church to protect me, love me, provide for me, and lead me.
God carried Tank through his injury.
God will carry us through this, too.

Even when we take breaks.
Even when we yell at the sky.
Even when our prayers sound more like sighs.
He still carries.

---

⭐ Merry Christmas — From a Family Who Keeps Rising

Thank you for loving us.
For praying for us.
For supporting us.
For standing with us through miracles and messes.

We have survived cancer, floods, accidents, rehab, manipulation, and more court filings than I ever imagined.

We are still here.
Still laughing.
Still fighting.
Still rising.

Merry Christmas from our lightning-struck, miracle-built, court-tested family.

And here’s to 2026 —
a year of peace, protection, clarity, and (please, Lord) fewer plot twists.