Freshly Cast

🤍 Happy 17th Birthday to my love 🤍 You are fierce, kind, smart, loving, full of grit, an incredible friend, and wise beyond your years.

You continue to teach me even when I’m the one who is supposed to be teaching you.

As you enter year seventeen, you are on the verge of becoming an adult: one person remembering who you were, and another emerging who you’re going to become.

Blessed be to God for the gift of you 🙏 His plans for you are already imprinted on His heart. Continue to lean into Him with every hope, fear, and joy that abounds.

Here’s to you always becoming who you are meant to be. Love you to Heaven and back 😘

So Damn Lucky

The only thing Stephanie loved more than Jesus, Mark, her children, her family, and her friends was Disney, tennis, The Royal Family — and, of course, Dave Matthews. In his song So Damn Lucky, he sings, “Amazing what a minute can do.” Let’s think about that for a moment. Think of the minutes you spent with our Stephy. If you’re here, it means you spent many. And how grateful we are to God for those — the gift of them, the joy that happened in them, the joy they will continue to bring as we navigate the unthinkable journey without her here.

The minutes are imprinted in our hearts and minds — the ones that built her story with us. For you see, we all have our own story with Steph. And what a story it is. What a gift she gave each one of us. The minutes she cheered from the sidelines for her kids until her voice gave out. The way she would light up when her babies and Mark walked in the house. The minutes she wiggled herself around that tennis court. The way she scrunched her hair up against her face when she danced. The minutes she would put on those gloves to wash dishes — never leaving your house without washing all of them. The minute she would reach for your hand before she prayed. The minutes she said, “yous twos,” when she fondly spoke of her favorite people. The minutes she spent telling us she loved us.
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