I brought Mama Marci to the sunrise yesterday.

She flew in from Huntsville for Easter weekend, and she wanted her to see in person the sunrise from my texted photographs over the years. We layered up. It had been warm enough to sit outside with my beach chair for a few days, but the wind bit.

My heron was hiding in the jetties. I spotted him right away, camouflaged in the rocks, but those twig legs were unmistakable even at a distance. Marci couldn’t see him. I pointed. She squinted. She trusted me.

That felt like a metaphor for something, but I let it go.

Kevin came. He took our picture with the sunrise behind us. I let him. We were silhouettes. I lined Kevin up to the north. He tried again. Even without makeup, Marci’s face is priceless to me. Usually, I just have to imagine it on the other side of the phone back in Huntsville.

After sunrise today, I worked in the yard while she was getting ready. My back aches, my body is tired, but the ground doesn’t care what you’re carrying. It needs tending regardless, and tending it felt good. I’m grateful for what I have. I appreciate it more now than I used to. It’s worth the sweat.

Later, I tried to practice normalcy. I took Marci to Williamsburg to see the historical landmarks. I watched people laughing and taking pictures beside the flowering trees. Marci asked to take mine. I said no. I didn’t feel like being photographed. I felt separate. Disconnected. I told her I was watching people be normal but felt outside of it.

She said, “What’s normal? You think I feel normal? I’m just a good actress.”

Three years after her son Joshua’s death, and she still practices normalcy to a certain degree. Her honesty stopped my spiraling immediately. She didn’t offer comfort. She offered company.

Later, she asked me to stop working. Just for five minutes. Just sit and talk. It was nearly impossible at first. When we talk on the phone, I’m always doing something — folding laundry, cooking, walking the dog. It took a little coaxing, but I settled in on the couch across from her with Tito on my lap. Five minutes turned to ten. Hershey, my best friend Mary Beth’s dog I’m sitting for, nestled into my side. Mama Marci has a lot of wisdom from her years. I was grateful to have stilled long enough to hear her. The puppy love healed, too.

I’ve been carrying my proof copy of Fearfully, Wonderfully, and Bipolar-ly Made everywhere this week — reading in spare minutes at appointments, at stoplights, in parking lots. It was written during a season that has since changed. I finished the manuscript last January, spent the spring editing, wrote the concluding remarks in July, and sent it out to publishers. Two rounds of rejections and a year later, I’m self-publishing under Writer’s Growth Press. The book reflects a household that was, at the time, motivated by the growth mindset depicted in its pages. I chose to leave the manuscript intact rather than rewrite it to match current circumstances. The truth of that season deserves to exist as it was. To change it would be to compromise its integrity.

Marci said something this week that I’ve been turning over. She said the last three years felt wasted — years strained from her surviving son, years severed from some surviving family members. I asked her, “So, would you say that about my life, too? These years were wasted?”

I don’t believe that. God doesn’t waste years. He redeems them. The people who walked beside me during this season — Mary Beth, Kevin, Mama Marci, Pastor Colin, and so many more — they aren’t evidence of wasted time. They’re evidence of grafting, of God choosing who stays.

Marci met Pastor Colin after church on Easter Sunday. He asked how I knew her, and I told him the truth: she’s the mother of my last boyfriend before my husband, who died suddenly of a heart attack three years ago. She’s my chosen mother. God gave us each other.

Colin’s Easter sermon was called “He Knows Your Name,” from John 20. Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, hopeless, taking action anyway — going to the garden, seeking. She doesn’t recognize the risen Christ until He calls her by name. I’ve always related to Mary Magdalene. She was the one the demons had lived in. She was the one who stayed at the cross when everyone else left. And she was the first one He spoke to after death lost its hold.

Hopelessness leads to action. Action leads to seeking. Seeking leads to Christ.

I wish I felt His hand in mine. But I know He walks beside me. I know He knows my name, too.

Next Tuesday, April 14, Fearfully, Wonderfully, and Bipolar-ly Made: From Shame to Sanctuary will be available on Amazon. I’ve been carrying that proof copy in my bag all week, reading my own words at stoplights and in parking lots, amazed that the girl who hid behind a diagnosis for fifteen years found the courage to put her name on the cover.

Mama Marci painted the sunrise in watercolor last week. I’ll frame it, and it can join her painting of my blue heron. Kevin took our picture at the pier. Mary Beth’s dog is asleep on my couch beside me as I type. The heron was in the jetties this morning, camouflaged but unmistakable. Nothing is wasted.

God knows my name. Next week, so will you.