I let myself be brave Saturday.

My blog is my own now.  Still hosted and things, but www.bloominginidaho.com is all plugged in and it is really me. $73 dollars and about an hour, fine, two hours of user-related technical difficulties later, and it is just me!  This isn’t the beginning of the blog, but in a very real way, it is.

I feel like introductions are certainly in order.

I am Dana.  I am 36, married to sweet Toby, a mama to three of the sweetest naughty kids on the planet.  I am a small town Idaho grown girl.  We moved to Weiser, temporary, when my mom was diagnosed with cancer in 2005.  My husband is an amazing computer guy who does stuff with printers that I can’t articulate for HP in Boise.  He has worked there for 15 years or so, with no education of sorts to speak of.  He is hard work and determination.

We bought a little flower shop in Weiser for me to play with in 2007.  So much for a temporary move.  Two little girls in tow, we blossomed and tried to figure out this business thing.  We grew and we changed and we learned.  Somehow, from knowing nothing about flowers when I first walked in the little shop, it is still rooted in the little country town.

Through the business and broken bones, the disciples found us.  We found Jesus at 30.  This relationship rocked our world and changed our life’s direction.

In 2013 or 2014, after being sick since my late teens, I was finally diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona.  All during this medical battle, my husband took his aggression out on the mats.  Perhaps, his lifeline through the physical, financial, and emotional rollercoaster that chronic medical problems can bring, he worked through it positively, healthy, and hard.  He earned his way to a brown belt in Jiu Jitsu and his very own studio sits right next to my sweet shop.  As he continues to fight on the mats, I continue to fight neurologic illness.  The disease continues to reveal itself in an atypical way, but at least, after fifteen years with chronic disease, I am taken seriously.

Almost as serious as cancer.  Ha.  My ferocious mother has been battling adenocarcinoma of the small intestine for over 10 years!  This is a rare diagnosis and she was initially given an 18% chance to make it two years.  We have been blessed with so much time.  Unfortunately, a lot of that time has been regrouping from 6 cancer reoccurrences and eight total surgeries.  We are now fighting a more advanced stage of the disease and are presently working with doctors at the University of California at San Diego Moore’s Cancer Clinic to see if an advanced surgical and chemotherapy treatment would be helpful to treat mom’s cancer and give us more time.

There are so many layers to my little small town life.  My intention with this blog is to share the work of God within these layers so that others might see Him.  I’m not always positive and unicorns and rainbows – I battle depression and anxiety, but I’m working on that.  Always working on that.  I am a rough-edged work in progress.  Something about being raw and real about it has seemed to help others.  I’d like to share the story of my mom and my health battle’s as they are with hope and with grace.

I’ve been sitting on this gift of writing afraid.  Afraid to call it what it is.  A gift.  It is mostly easy and natural to me.  But, I’m too afraid of my own insecurities to put it out there.

So, here is me listening to the little angel He sent me last week, serving with the Spirit of His power.  Amen.