Originally posted Advent, 2016...

Christmas is supposed to be white twinkle lights and homemade ornaments with perfect family members and wishes come true. But that's not how life works. Some people are going through really hard things, and the timing happens to coincide with the most festive time of the year.

Some will be braving memories of a lost loved one for the first time. For others, it's been years but the pain remains fresh. Sickness. Chronic illness. Pain. The list of hardships is long, and most of us know someone who’s suffering—or perhaps it’s even us.

At our house we do our best to parent with sarcasm. I'm sure someone can psychoanalyze that and tell me how horrible it is, but when you rock the kind of stubborn that we do in our little home, you need some tools at your disposal. I don't know where my children get their stubbornness from. (I can only assume my husband is to blame.)

Hospital sleeping arrangements are the worst. When we had our daughter, she was in the NICU, and they transferred us to an older room at the end of the hallway. All night long we would hear carts and medical personal traveling back and forth. I was so incredibly ready to go home at the end of that week and sleep in my own bed.

When Kara was fighting breast cancer, I entered a world where everything felt turned upside down. Navigating friendship is hard enough, but knowing what to do or say when someone has cancer can be completely overwhelming. The not knowing makes some people want to head in the other direction. There aren’t perfect answers to this question of what to say/what not to say. And there is grace in that. There’s no exact rule book—you’ll have to dive into to figuring out your relationship and what that looks like in the midst of cancer. But let me first encourage you—you can do this. Being there for your person is the best thing you can do. And it will bless both of you.

October is breast cancer awareness month, but most of us don’t need to be reminded to be aware of the disease. We already are aware. We know a friend or family member who’s currently fighting it or has fought it in the past. We recognize that breast cancer is hard and heartbreaking, and that it doesn’t discriminate in age. But what we don’t often talk about, is how can we support our friend or loved one who is fighting breast cancer?