It was my joy to be one of Amber Huff and her family’s pastors when she was a child. It’s my extreme joy to know her as an adult and a parent in situations not unlike son LJ4’s but far beyond. To see all she and her husband John do…they’re amazing! For example, she recently wrote and shared this publicly —

Free Float

Throughout our life we have people that anchor us. If you’re lucky like myself, your parents are the first to help anchor you. They keep you safe, balanced, while letting you learn who you are separate from them. You add on family and friends who also help to anchor you, some you outgrow and some grow with you. As you get older co-workers and significant others also help add to your anchor army. 

Soon you also find yourself being an anchor for your own children, all the while still needing anchors yourself.

When you are a medical parent it’s often hard to find and keep those anchors, if we are sticking with the nautical theme, anchors are similar to lighthouses they are who help to keep you grounded, keep you humble, they are the ones you seek out when the night comes too quickly and you are suddenly lost. They are your lighthouse.

Often I find myself free floating, anchorless. It can be scary, overwhelming and at times exhilarating. Sometimes you have to grow further than the rope tethered to the anchor can allow. Often you keep tugging on that rope trying to pull that anchor along, all the while being reminded that this is the end of the line with this anchor, this person. This is hard, many times soul crushing because how are you going to make it to the next phase, the next part of life without them? 

But there’s something that those really great people aka anchors have been doing all along, they’ve been preparing you for this moment. For this time of free floating. These people know you have the skills and determination to make it, even when it’s scary, when it’s hard and when you just want to cry.

The best anchors prepare you for life beyond them. 

— I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Okay, I’m crying, too.

Tears of gratitude. For so much. From so many.

For so many. Including you and me.