showing up

even when it’s hard

“I am walking a paradox,” she [Wynonna] said. “I feel joy, I feel pain, I feel light, I feel dark.”

“I want people to know that they’re loved,” she said. “I want people to know that there is hope.”

Interview by-KAYLIN KAUPISH Guideposts

I just want to bury myself under the covers and let someone else care for everything! Can you relate?

I have felt that more than once in my life. The first time was when my dad unexpectedly passed away in 1988, one month after my marriage. I wanted to move back home and be there for my mom and little sister. I didn’t want to be four hours away from them and since I couldn’t be there for them, all I wanted to do was forget about everything that was happening. I just wanted to escape from reality.

There have been other times in my adult life where I wanted to escape, quit my job, quit my family, quit fighting, just…quit! All because, sometimes life is just stinking hard! Most of the time, life is not a walk through the roses in a park. This life is exhausting and challenging, and it’s human to just want to escape sometimes, but it’s important to know that God calls us to a higher standard, and He will give us what we need to rise above.

Since my diagnosis in November, there are days where I just want to stay in bed, pull the covers over my head and say, not today God. I am tired. I am frustrated. I don’t want to work. I don’t want to be nice. I don’t want to choose happy. I don’t want to go to one more doctor’s appointment or have one more test or wear these radiation stickers on my chest that are constant reminders, x marks the spot! I don’t want to be told treatment is pushed back another week, and yet I continue to fight those emotions, even when I don’t want to, because I believe what Philippians 4:13 NIV tells us, “I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength.”

I fight because I refuse to quit. I fight because I will always go down swinging, and I fight because Of all of those who have fought before me, those who fought and fight even bigger battles than mine, for they have shown me the way of a warrior, and I fight because God calls us to always do our best, whatever lot we are handed in this life.

We are called to show up, even when it’s hard!

Country singing star, Wynonna Judd, lost not only the other half of her singing duet and touring partner, but her mother, Naomi Judd to suicide in April 2022. I have found it beyond strong that she fulfilled her obligation to fans and her band, and all parties involved by keeping the “final tour” she and her mom were planning to make prior to her mom’s passing. Talk about showing up when it’s hard!!

Singer Brandi Carlile who performed with Wynonna a couple of times on this tour recently posted the following on social media and it speaks to someone showing up when it was hard. I mean really hard, and what it looks like to walk through conflicting emotions like, gratitude and grief and peace in the chaos .

“I still have both my parents.. but one thing I learned by watching @wynonnajudd soldier through the loss of her mother and musical partner is that it’s not a gentle change.” Carlile speaks of all Wynonna was dealing with, estate planning and funerals, grief mixed with stress, the press, “gossip economy, profound insecurity, love, support, music… and for The Judds: The Final Tour. Wynonna sang through all that… she didn’t miss a single show. She cried every night. There has never been a tour like it and there won’t be again.

She did her job. Wy celebrated @thejuddsofficial and sorted out her grief with all of us in exactly the same way she has been working through many of her lifes’ incredible challenges since she was a teenager: on stage. She even sang on her knees.
And as the fans, we understood the assignment. We showed up for her too. we did our job. It was a joy.

All I can think to say to her incredible band/crew and all my women peers who stood behind Wynonna every night is well done… and aren’t we lucky? We got to stand in the bright light of a dying star and a new one being born into herself.”

This is what it looks like to show up, even when it’s hard. This is what God calls us to do in this difficult world where we will face pain and struggles. This is what it looks like when God walks through those challenges with you, her band, the other performers, her fans, God was with her when she showed up.

Through every part of her healing, Judd says that her faith in God helped her. “It’s the Holy Spirit thing for me,” she said. “I feel the Lord, and I feel joy and I feel sorrow all at the same time.”  Interview by-KAYLIN KAUPISH Guideposts

“Whatever you do, do it from the heart for the Lord and not for people. You know that you will receive an inheritance as a reward. You serve the Lord Christ.” Colossians 3:23-24 NIV