Our Story

We’ve been together since high school, got married in 1997 when I graduated high school and now have four children...Jacob, Bailey, Halle Grace and John David. We now have a wonderful daughter-in-love, Lauren, and two grandkids, Mason and Millie. Our life together has been hard work, constantly moving and changing, chaotic and unexpected! Together we have shared small town life, country roots, big city and global adventures. We’ve experienced having plenty and struggled to buy a gallon of milk. Death was too close and too often in our young lives.  During the pandemic we experienced as much trauma and loss as we had the 40 years prior. However, in the midst of it all, there has been tremendous blessing! We’ve also received great joy, restoration, and peace and our hope is to help others who struggle and have suffered to find these as well. Here’s the story… 

Once upon a time… [Isn’t that how every good story starts?] …There were high-school sweethearts, age fourteen and sixteen. It started with a look in band and spit-wads in algebra class and the rest is history. 

Being married at 18 and 19 and a new baby within our first year of marriage did not necessarily set us up to be successful.  Intimacy in our marriage has been under attack from the beginning, spiritually speaking. We grew up surrounded by a hard-working community that had a “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality, but in reality, was missing the abundant life that God offers. As a whole, we felt an absence of true guidance, mentorship, or teachings about a LIFE that transcended all the funk and struggles of the world. There were so many people in our community who were really good at trying not to sin…be good and be nice…look good on the outside. Both of us have always felt there was something more...that we were created for something more.   

Prior to 2010, life was hard. Joseph graduated by the skin of his teeth from a Christian university in 2000 and began working at a large technology company shortly thereafter. I entered into physical therapy school to eventually earn a doctorate in 2004. Baby #2 was born 6 months before graduation. Life sped up. Miscarriages and disappointments lingered and then baby #3 was born in 2009. On the outside, things looked great. If we hadn’t vowed to never allow divorce to even be on the table before our marriage, we wouldn’t have made it past a couple years, much less a decade! We were growing in our careers, but internally falling apart. Things were not right spiritually. Picture suffocation. Flash forward to 2010.  

On the brink of internal combustion and feeling as though he were failing at every aspect of life, Joseph, moved by the Holy Spirit, surrendered during a church service by going forward to admit he was broken and to request prayer. After church that day, a friend met him and mentioned a book entitled, “Wild at Heart” by John Eldredge. Joseph wasn’t a reader and listened to the audiobook first, then devoured the text and scripture as questions were raised that stirred his soul. Just over a year later Joseph attended a “Wild at Heart Boot Camp” in Colorado and had a 180-degree change. This was the beginning of “the awakening” for our family, and after two more miscarriages we got a bonus baby #4 in 2013!   

In 2014 we moved to Virginia as I pursued a career out of the clinic and in academia. Our time in Virginia was the beginning of some significant suffering for our family, but significant contributions to my career and experience as an academic. Inability to sell our home back in Arkansas and inability for Joseph to find a job in Virginia led to some of the most humbling and challenging years for our family. We lived in the basement of a colleague’s house for a year and our final years in Virginia were spent living in a farmhouse from the late 1800’s that we were living in and simultaneously remodeling and restoring. Joseph and I had a vibrant college ministry from our home where we would host “dinner and devos” and I would cook for up to 30 or so people. That time was amazing, filling our hearts and has left us with some amazing friendships. Virginia was a time of challenge, new adventure, breakdown, and breakthrough for our family. In 2018, I received an offer to come back to Arkansas as faculty at my alma mater, the University of Central Arkansas. In 2020, our family was able to move back home to Joseph’s family farm.  

We now live a life of adventure (not always the kind one might think when you hear the word adventure), braving the storms that come and stay and come again, and grow stronger and come again. There is a secret to weathering those storms, over and over and growing in strength, peace and grace. That secret is through revelation of true and intimate relationship with God, battling spiritual warfare, submission to God’s process for restoration of brokenness and healing and revealing us as his creation. Being revealed as God created us to be, through His grace. We long to share this hope with anyone who is burdened and broken! 

 For the Kingdom,

Lori