As the daughter of a career navy fighter pilot, home was wherever my parents set up house. When we were 华体会体育side, my family spent summers with my grandparents, who, along with most of our extended family, lived in the Seattle area, so the Emerald City was home-ish. 我从小就崇拜我98岁的祖母Nonnie。 While my geography regularly changed, a constant was Nonnie’s painting studio.

我的祖父母靠水生活，经营商业捕鱼生意。 These summers are magical in memory—working alongside my family by day, swimming and playing on the water in the evenings. In Nonnie’s studio, I learned about the importance of the principles and elements of design by using charcoal on paper before I was allowed to advance to paint. At the age of 5, I (finally) painted my first watercolor landscape of Mount Rainier.

Nonnie示范了通过创造力活出社区信仰的意义。 Within the walls of her studio, I learned how the visual arts tap into the core of humanity. Made in the image of God, humans, in our diversity, have a mandate to create and uniquely express ourselves. As a painter, my work is greatly influenced by the location and space in which I exist—whether long term or temporary.

13岁的时候，我们全家因新任务回到了华盛顿州。 就在这段时间里，我被诊断出患有白血病。 I was a healthy teen, and my family was blindsided by my diagnosis and horrible prognosis. Yet, after three and a half years of chemotherapy, steroids, blood transfusions, pokes and prods, spinal tap injections, bone marrow aspirations, intramuscular shots, extreme and never-ending nausea, multiple trips to the emergency room, countless prolonged hospital stays, pills and more pills, multiple hair losses, teenage angst and self-loathing, and a bout or two of shingles, I was cancer-free.

我的癌症经历也让我走上了艺术和绘画的道路。 I lacked energy to do much of anything else, but I could certainly pick up a paintbrush. In spite of it all, and with an infinite amount of prayer, God blessed our family with joy during this time—utter joy in the midst of terrible pain and suffering. Life lessons from this time continue to impact me today.

今天…… 嗯，是的，今天。 Once again, I have been diagnosed with cancer, and similar to the last time around, I have been completely caught off guard. This wasn’t supposed to happen—I’ve already been there, done that. The fight is also different this time around: I am no longer a dependent. 相反，我有一个依靠我的家庭。 Each day we strive to be in what we call “positive fight mode,” which is an act of being that I learned from another family in the pediatric cancer community. Essentially it means that whatever we do, we do it to the best of our ability, with the best attitude possible and with the most energy we can muster. Above all, we bathe everything in prayer.

This difficult season has miraculously blessed me with time: once again, cancer has drawn me back into painting. My work has always been a personal and faith-filled reflection of the individual—me—born out of a deeply held desire to reflect and actively interpret situation and place. 现在，它比以往任何时候都更加…… a place to pray, process, wrestle, think, and, in some ways, experience the healing nature of creating in a studio.

作为一个患有白血病的孩子，我经历了快乐。 As a spouse, mother, and professor experiencing cancer, I experience joy. Yes, there is suffering, but God’s joyful faithfulness is true, and I am so very grateful to be able to process through this time holding my brush to the canvas and discovering what is in store.