Kristin Hill Taylor

Seeking God as the Author of Every Story

Reflections on living & dying

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I knew I wanted to gather some old friends to celebrate my 40th birthday. Four dear friends (and three of their husbands and kids) joined my family at my lake house for the first weekend of May. They brought gifts, memories, and all the food we needed to feed our party of 23 people.

Jaclyn, Sarah, Katie, and Bekah hadn’t all met before, but I have histories with them that span decades, literally. Some of our stories have overlapped, but I knew this was the right group of people to gather together.

Starting in 1990, Katie was my next-door-neighbor-turned-best-friend for all of middle and high school and we remain friends across the state who wish we were neighbors. Bekah and I also were friends in middle and high school. We swam together, she introduced me to country music, and we continue to gather at Christmastime and other times we have extra time when we’re visiting my mom in Louisville. (Fun side note: I encouraged her and her now-husband to date, so they blame me and thank me in the same breath. I’ve actually known her husband Barrett longer than anyone who was at my lake house that weekend!)

Jaclyn and I met in college and had intersecting friends starting in the fall of 1998. We actually got closer after college, got married the same summer, walked through infertility and all the early days of motherhood literally together, and now miss each other if we go too many days without hanging out. Our husbands and kids are tight too. Sarah walked into our church in May 2009, pregnant with Davey who would become my Ben’s first friend, and we’ve basically been friends since. She’s since moved four hours away, but we have an ongoing, never-ending text conversation that brings me so much joy.

Jaclyn and Katie put together a book of blessings and memories from all kinds of people in my life. Jaclyn gave me other goodies and helped organize the whole weekend. Sarah gave me a felt letter board with a sweet message already displayed. (The quote is a reference from a book about friendship by Melanie Shankle that Jaclyn, Sarah, and I like to quote to each other.) Katie made me a T-shaped shelf that’s already hanging on my wall. Bekah bought my dinner when us girls went out for Mexican food one of the night’s together.

Our boys fished and caught enough bluegill and catfish to feed us lunch on Sunday. The older girls made friendship bracelets, had a sleepover in the basement one night, and helped us keep track of the little girls. We went on some boat rides, laughed at memories, told back stories, and ate well.

My soul was so filled with these
new memories with old friends.

The celebrating continued on Monday when some of my friends I know from my kids’ school gathered for breakfast together. It was such a sweet way to begin the new week celebrating some more. Forty certainly had me reflective and craving all the quality time with people I love.

I wanted to celebrate with my people, but God knew I would need to be filled to the brim with love and support as the week continued. God saw beyond my 40th birthday.

My dad went into cardiac arrest the evening of May 7 – four days after I turned 40, one day after Cate turned 12, and five days before Mother’s Day. He passed away about 35 hours later, on Thursday, May 9. (Here’s his obituary.)

He had been without oxygen three different times – for an undetermined amount of time when he went into cardiac arrest, on the way to the hospital in the ambulance, and again in the emergency room. His body never recovered and I watched him stop breathing while hooked to a ventilator and lots of medicines in an Indianapolis hospital.

I haven’t written much about my dad here because our relationship was complicated. For years, I’ve grieved not having the kind of relationship I wish we had. My dad and how I’ve long longed for his approval and attention were the subjects of conversations in counseling. I’d forgiven him and tried to share my life with him, even from a distance.

Regardless of the complications, he was my dad. Right after I was filled from my birthday, I found myself unexpectedly grieving. As Dad was unresponsive in the hospital bed, I learned things about his life in Indianapolis I didn’t know. Even my grief has been complicated and in the days since his death, I’ve found myself beneath a cloud of emotions.

With three kids, the end of the school year, and my everyday life here, I have been able to step out from beneath the cloud, but then when I’m not distracted anymore, it’s still there. Grief is tricky. And I’m so grateful I was filled to the brim with love and support before I had to begin to navigate my dad’s death.

I have questions I wish I could ask him. I want to hold onto hope for a little longer. I remember him as an innovative educator who created an environment at an elementary school for most of my childhood and then a middle school just a little farther down the road that teachers, parents, and students loved. He excelled in his profession.

Three of the friends who gathered at my lake house knew my dad. We had actually talked about some childhood memories involving him just days before he died. Looking back even a couple of weeks, God was preparing me. I didn’t realize it then, obviously, but, for as unexpected as the timing was, I also found comfort in his death being sandwiched between so much life.

Saying yes to March Madness

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Hello, March Madness!

In the winter, we plan our social life around the Murray State basketball schedule. We meet friends for dinner before the games. We have friends who travel with us to a few away games – sometimes in a 14-passenger van we borrow and now my eight-seater Pacifica is an option with another family that most often joins us.

I know sports aren’t everyone’s form of entertainment, but Greg and I both would choose a college basketball game over an art museum, a college football game before a musical at the theater, and a Major League Baseball game instead of any sort of dance recital. We both grew up watching sports, so it naturally became something we did together.

We have season tickets to Murray State basketball and football games. We try to go to a St. Louis Cardinals baseball most seasons. We also like University of Kentucky football and basketball, and occasionally make our way to Lexington for a game.

Then we had kids – and we kept doing it.

But the Racers are our favorites.

I have pictures of Cate and Ben sleeping at MSU basketball games. Rachel doesn’t fall asleep like they did because she doesn’t want to miss anything, but like her siblings, she is learning to spell R-A-C-E-R-S! She recognizes both the mascot and the logo around town. Cate is old enough to have memories of players she’s loved watching and each season becomes more invested and interested. Ben asks more questions about the rules and strategies and loves playing sports. He filled out his first March Madness bracket this week.

With sports come stories of perseverance, achievement, and sometimes loss. In a culture where everyone thinks they deserve a participation trophy, it’s good for the kids to see the world keeps turning after your team loses. And, of course, it’s fun to celebrate with teams we’ve come to know from our seats.

It’s been an exciting season for Racer fans.

Murray State only lost four games in the regular season – two by very few points to Alabama and Auburn, both bigger programs in the Southeastern Conference, and then two to conference foes when our best player was nursing an ankle injury.

Speaking of the best player, point guard Ja Morant has gotten much national attention this year. He’s dunked over people and landed himself and the rest of the Racers on SportsCenter more than once. He’s expected to be among the first few picks in the NBA Draft. He’s been a joy to watch because he truly looks like he’s having the most fun. He celebrates his teammates and this town.

The Racers shared the regular-season championship with Belmont and then went on to beat the Bruins in the conference tournament. With the tournament trophy in hand, the Racers also clinched an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. They play Marquette today, and we’re hoping this isn’t the last game for this team that’s been so fun to watch. We wish we were in Hartford, Connecticut to watch, but we’ll be watching from our living room with friends.

Basketball games give me a chance to say yes, introduce my kids to other towns, and let go of our bedtime routine. Naturally, I’m a rule follower who wants everyone to follow my rules, but I’ve had opportunities to give the kids treats and grace. Those things don’t come naturally to me, so being a sports fan has helped me keep perspective on life.

Being a sports fan has helped me be a yes mom
and provided a backdrop for making memories.

{Tweet that.}

March Madness is the best in our sports-loving world. And now we get to root for our favorite team to be the Cinderella of The Big Dance. Pass the popcorn.

 

Real-life family time

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The Family Honor Plate and Table Thyme Discussion Cards sat on my kitchen counter for a couple of weeks, so the kids were excited when I told them we were going to paint it after dinner one night last week.

We ate meatloaf, green beans, roasted potatoes, and leftover rolls I had frozen from Friendsgiving. (Only one kid complained about what I served for dinner, so that’s basically a win!)

During dinner, we talked about some of the questions and prompts from Table Thyme and I actually had some insights to my kids: Ben acts like he won’t ever get married and Cate doesn’t want to talk about the future, which she knows we can’t predict. He later told me he wanted to keep living with us forever, so that’s sweet and I’ll totally accept it from my 8-year-old boy!

While I was cleaning up the kitchen, my oldest two kids started pestering each other. I warned them to improve their interactions and went back to loading the dishwasher.

The plate, paints, and brushes were ready to go, but Cate and Ben were still pestering and arguing. So instead of painting the plate, I gave them a lecture on the fruit of the spirit they weren’t exhibiting.

This is a good time to tell you more about this plate craft: The Family Honor Plate starts as a ceramics-painting project you get to create and bake at home. Then it turns into a fun family tradition and parenting tool to raise our children in the fruits of the Holy Spirit, as written in Galatians 5:22.

So we got to the lesson before the craft, but maybe that’s what they needed to hear. Yes, they were mad they didn’t get to paint a plate that night. But we had a good talk, and I do think they’ve been slightly more aware of their interactions.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

They’re still excited to paint the plate. And we will; we just haven’t had a chance yet.

We did have a weekend filled with good moments together. We cut down out an awkward Christmas tree from our own land. We watched “Wonder.” We tossed grapes into each others’ mouths another night after dinner. And we talked about some more Table Thyme prompts, which help take conversations to a deeper level and encourage families to kindly voice opinions and share experiences.

If the purpose of the plate and cards are to bring families together, we’ve already experienced some of that. The activity didn’t go as planned, but that’s real life sometimes and I’m working on accepting reality and adjusting accordingly.

About the plate

The virtues are listed in the center of the plate for mom and dad to use as their anchor to guide them in how they need to show up for and to their children. This is how our children learn what Christ’s character is.

Turn dinnertime into a celebration when you catch someone making good choices and showing good character and present their meal on the Family Honor Plate. This is when you could talk about the choices they made and the virtues and character that it showed.

About the cards

Every question is followed up with “Why?” to take everyone’s answers to a deeper more intimate level. That’s where the magic is and the real conversation starts. So now when even a simple question such as “What is your favorite dessert?” rather than someone answering “apple pie” and then moving on to the next person, the whole family gets to walk down memory lane because it reminds them of Grandma Smith who always made apple pies with them when they came to visit.

Communication is the key to connecting, building and maintaining healthy relationships. When we are raise our children to be confident in their ability to communicate with others and get their point across, situations are less stressful and they have better outcomes.

Honestly, at $39.95 the plate craft is more than I’d usually want to spend, but it would make a nice Christmas gift. The cards ($19.95) would make a great stocking stuffer! A 10% discount is offered if you buy three plates and you can save 20% when you buy three card sets.

Learn more about and purchase both products online.

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I received each of these products for free from FlyBy Promotions in exchange for an honest review. The story I shared is a peek into my real life and these opinions are my own.