Juli Riggs

Before the season that changed everything, I was a mother and wife wrapped up in the beautiful work of motherhood. I thought life would look like raising children, planting a garden, and roaming the world with the people I loved most. I imagined years measured in growing kids and changing seasons, the ordinary chaos of dirty dishes piled in the sink, endless loads of laundry, muddy shoes by the door, and dinner around a crowded table. I thought life would be beautifully ordinary, filled with laughter, adventure, and memories tucked into everyday moments. I never imagined how quickly ordinary life could become something I longed for.

Then came the season that broke everything open. Our daughter was diagnosed with cancer at just six years old, and suddenly the ordinary life I had taken for granted felt impossibly fragile. Her diagnosis came amid the chaos of COVID, when doors closed and we were separated from the people we loved at the very moment we needed them most. We moved homes. My husband’s work carried him to distant lands, leaving empty spaces where I desperately wished he could be.

And then, on a roller coaster, something inside my head broke. What should have been a moment of laughter and adventure became the beginning of two years of relentless pain, of retreating from noise, people, and pieces of the life I loved. Somewhere in the midst of it all, the woman I had always known, and the woman I once imagined becoming, began to disappear.

Much of what I write is a reflection of the love and presence of God in my life and in the world around me. I write about finding Him in the beautiful and the broken, in prayers answered and prayers that seem to linger, in ordinary moments that quietly remind us we are not alone. I believe we find joy when we choose to love, even knowing love carries the risk of heartbreak. We discover gratitude not only in the abundance of our blessings, but sometimes in their absence. And we find faith, in God, in humanity, and in ourselves, when disappointment gives us every reason to stop believing. These are the stories I want to tell: stories that look closely at an imperfect life and still find evidence of goodness, beauty, God, and joy.

I chose to share my words because I want to invite others to see the world for a moment through my eyes. I see evidence of God everywhere, in the laughter of children, the kindness of strangers, the notes of a beautiful song, the wind and light moving through the trees, and the quiet interactions between people that might otherwise go unnoticed. I see Him in the hard, the ugly, the frightening, and the uncertain, too. I write because perhaps, by sharing what I see, someone else might begin to notice Him in the ordinary corners of their own story.