Choosing to Live Brightly

A story of love, loss, and what it means to Live Brightly

It’s Saturday morning, I’ve got instrumental worship music playing on the speaker in front of me, I’m sitting in my office (a warm, cozy home office), black coffee, a candle lit, and I’m beyond excited to be writing my first post on Substack.

In 2011 I started a blog called Healthy Hits the Spot–some of you have been with me since then (I see you and I love you for that!). Over the years, that blog turned into a health coaching business, that turned into a life coaching business, that evolved into a Christian life coaching business because I realized there was only so far I could take my clients on our own, we needed the active work of the Holy Spirit to go farther (and we have!).

This Substack feels like the next evolution. Not of the whole thing, just a part of it. A place to write long-form again, to get quiet, to reflect, and to build some legacy work that I’ll be able to save and share for the rest of my life (regardless of how long I actually end up writing here). As I write, I think to myself: one day Selah will get to read this, and I hope she is encouraged by it.

So here we go, starting the stack…

There’s so much I want to share, but for the first post, I have it on my heart to talk a bit more about my dad, Terry, who died in 2022 from Chronic Alcoholism. This post won’t be about drunken stories, anger, or shame. Quite the opposite. It’ll be about the good, choosing to Live Brightly™, what that means to me, and remembering the wonderful, incredible parts of him. The parts of his life that he labored and laughed and loved, because that’s what I remember most. Forgiveness is a gift; a gift for me, as I remember the best parts of him, and a gift for him, as I’m hopeful that in his last days, he received the fullest gift of forgiveness available to all of us.

The day my brothers and I spread my mom and dad’s ashes together (my mom went to heaven February 11, 2017, and we still had her ashes–what a gift to spread them together) miles out in the ocean, was the day I completely, and wholeheartedly forgave my dad. Since then, the best parts of him have been forefront in my memory.

Yesterday, I was talking to two of my best friends on Voxer. My friend Simi was talking about how she was playing pretend school with her kids… and the most fond memories flooded my mind.

Playing “school” when I was a kid was one of my favorite things to do. And my dad wholeheartedly supported that. He was so good at supporting what we loved most. My brother Terry loves music, and my mom and dad supported him in every way they could possibly afford to have all of the music equipment he needed to express that part of himself. Same with my brother Chase. He loves movies, and my mom and dad supported him in every way to feel like a film maker as a kid–from my dad building him real life sized green screens, to transforming our entire garage into a filming studio for him and his friends to take over for weeks on end… my dad was so good at going with us down our imaginary trails and bringing those joys to life. I’m so grateful to you for this, dad.

Fun fact: We all continue to enjoy these things. My brother Terry is in music and Chase is making movies. I still get to express my favorite parts of teaching and playing school through owning a business where I coach women across the globe. Pretty amazing, the gift my parents gave us to explore what we loved most. Thank you mom and dad!

For me, playing school was everything. My “when I grow up” dream was to be a teacher. In many ways, I do get to live this dream out now, in all the best aspects of it. Owning my own business has allowed me so much self-expression. I love that I’ve been able to sort of create this role of teacher… to let it naturally evolve to where my gifts and joys flow. Really, I would say I’m more of a listener, encourager, and champion-er. I love, LOVE, listening to and encouraging women.

Anyways, back to dad… and his support of us! He was a firefighter who often worked 5 days on, 7 days off–pretty awesome! He had a lot of time with us kids when he was home and he was so big on engaging and doing life with us. To fuel my love for playing school, he would go around to garage sales on weekends and look for anything that might help me build a classroom in our garage. Growing up, our garage took the shape of many different hobbies for each of us kids: a classroom for me, a filmmaking studio for Chase, a band practice spot for Terry. It transformed constantly into a space where us kids could enjoy the things we loved most with our friends.

At least, it did until it didn’t.

My dad had a very long stint of sobriety–15 years. I was born within those 15 years, and got to enjoy a truly incredible 11 years of them. I have the most fond memories of that time. Feeling like my dad was my own true hero. Countless days he’d take us kids and friends to the pool while mom was working. Ways he’d set up play for us at home. My dad was the dad who, if he was re-doing the fence, he’d take every part of the old fence to build us a club house. He seemed to make everything fun. He was so crafty, and made all of our holiday decorations with wood and paint by hand. If we wanted to play restaurant, he would would print and laminate menus for us. He’d let us take the screens off our home windows in order to make a “snack shack.” He was so un-stifling when I was little that it makes me cry to think about (in the most grateful way).

Things changed when I was 11. I will never, ever forget the day I walked upstairs to my parents master bedroom where the door was closed, the music was loud, and my dad was inside painting the walls. He was always fixing some part of our house. Do I smell beer? Mind you, alcohol had never been any part of our lives. Because dad didn’t drink, mom didn’t either. My mom could truly care less about alcohol. But something didn’t feel right, and it didn’t smell right either…

The next thing I remember was sitting downstairs at the kitchen counter, eating fried chicken with my brother Chase. Mom was there too. Dad comes walking in with a beer in his hand and says “Yeah, I’m drinking, and you wanna know why…?!” And every other word blurs in my memory from there. The only thing I remember was anger, blame, rage and the absolute loss of the dad I knew my whole childhood. One of the most grievous things in my life, was losing him.

The best, most heroic dad, was taken from me in that moment. A complete change in how I experienced him. From that point forward, up until he died, I would never know which version of dad I was going to get. Would I get the happy, really upbeat version? Where, even if he was drunk, he was just trying to make life a party? Or would I get the been drinking since 6 am, angry, terrifying version?

Even as I write this, it baffles me how much we lost my dad that week. Such a night and day difference. Just, gone. To this day, I have nightmares where someone in my dream, who I love deeply, just completely flips a switch. I know many of you have these dreams too, where the person you love the most will completely detach. It’s so painful.

At this point in my childhood, our family trips began to cease to exist. We still took some, but none of the memories were good like when we were younger. The memories became painful, and we stopped looking forward to traveling with dad.

Throughout the 20+ years that followed, we still had sweet moments, but they were so far and few in between. They were almost always when my dad would try and regain his sobriety for a couple of months at a time. In those short seasons we’d experience a taste of the dad we wanted. The one we knew was somewhere in there.

In these seasons, my dad and I would do step aerobics together. Get coffee after a workout. Walk at the beach. Or enjoy a meal he cooked (he loved to cook and was so phenomenal at it). I cherished those times. The bursts of sobriety were where my dad’s smile would come back. Where his giving and sharing heart would burst forth again. Where he’d cook enough food to feed the neighborhood, and then proceed to actually feed the neighborhood by taking everyone homemade salsa, pesto, hummus, etc…

All of this brings me to what it means to Live Brightly. This name was born, not just from the relationship I have with Jesus–which started at 18, more on this in another future post!–but because of my dad.

My dad is one of the greatest examples I have of what it looks like to Live Brightly compared to what it looks like to live with your lights dimmed, or even completely off. What it means to truly be yourself, and what it means to lose yourself. It’s what gives my heart the biggest pull and passion to 1) myself, Live Brightly, and 2) to help other women choose the brightest path God has for you, at every point you can.

At the end of our lives, people might be looking back, just as I look back on my dad’s, and see two paths we could have taken, and the path we took. I deeply want, for myself, for Selah to be able to look back and see how intentionally I made every effort to choose the brightest path, as often as I could. Not to be perfect, but to live in joy. To follow the things that were meaningful, and to make choices that bring peace, health, love, connection…

We’re all given so much choice (at least in most of the world–and if you have the choice, take it!) to choose what brightens, as opposed to what dims. There’s endless opportunity in choosing the path that brightens. The bright path is full of: forgiveness, joy, letting go, not taking things personally, connection, leaning in, love, being in community, helping, serving, loving, massive gratitude, daily awe toward God.

And there’s endless opportunity, right now especially, to choose the paths that dim–and it breaks my heart when I see people choosing this path. The path that dims is filled with: resentment, unforgiveness, anger, bitterness, jealously, rage, isolation, shame, lashing out, self-pity, narrow thinking, drunkenness, numbing.

Too often my dad chose this path. He hated it, but he’d keep coming back to it. We talked so often about how he didn’t want to be on this bath, but two things that would pull him back in were: shame and anger. When these guys showed up, it seemed all bets were off.

Forgiveness is such a gift. Letting go is such a gift.

The little things matter so much for joy–for me, lighting a candle, turning on music, having a cup of coffee, sitting in silence, journaling, playing. Decreasing distractions (I talk about this more here). Having a personal relationship with God. My dad used to teach me about God when I was a little girl, when he was happy. He’d teach me that God made me and everything around me.

And then once I developed a personal relationship with Jesus at 18, and he’d been long gone to the bottle, he’d question why I believed in God. He’d tell me I should read more and learn more about what else was out there. The truth? I knew he’d done that, and I saw what it did to him. I didn’t want that. I wanted (and still want) to focus my eyes solely on Jesus, because I know the joy, and comfort–even through pain–he’s brought to my life.

My dad’s life was so much worse off in his anger toward God. It was never better. But the lie of the enemy was: go be by yourself, you’ll be happier, everyone is against you, no one wants what you want, “you should” just do what you want. You should drink. The enemy is loud, enraged, mean, and the fruit of the enemy is the opposite of the fruit of walking with Jesus. It’s so obvious–I wish everyone could see it.

Jesus offers a different way. A path of peace, forgiveness, love, coming together. Community. Relationship.

Today, I am free, and I am at peace with my dad, because of Christ’s work in my heart. Yes, I remember everything about my dad–the good and the hard. And I talk about both, because they’re both such very real parts of my own experience of life on earth. But with that, I can honestly say that though the hard seasons with my dad break my heart to think about, because I know Jesus, I do not see those hard parts as my dad. I know who my dad is, and who he was meant to be. A joyful, serving, loving, interested in the joys of others, incredible husband and parent. And he was for so many years, and I know that’s who he really was–that was his YES GOD big life (that was the bright life). I do not see his battle with addiction as his own–I see it as an attack from the enemy. When he turned away from God, he gave the enemy a foothold, and the enemy did his work.

I will learn from this, and keep my eyes on God. If my dad were reading this, I know with certainty that he would say “that’s a little bit naive Paige, you don’t know how hard life can get.” But since the last time I heard him say those words in real life, I’ve lost my mom–my everything–to cancer, and I’ve lost my dad to Chronic Alcoholism, I’ve suffered through the loss of a child by miscarriage, and I know that life isn’t linear. I know that I have, and I will, encounter hard things. And while I certainly don’t look forward to more hard, I remind myself that in every single step, Jesus is with me. And He has shown me time and time again, the hand that He offers through the hard. He is always there, always comforting, guiding, leading, and loving me so deeply.

So I will continue looking to Him, loving Him, leaning on Him, and seeking Him with everything I have. I love Jesus so much.

A few days before my dad passed away, I was able to send him a song about Jesus’ love for Him. About letting go of shame. About completen forgiveness. My dad responded to me with this:

“You have made me feel welcome, I’m coming home.”

A few days later, without another word of communication, he passed away (not by choice). And this here, is the hope I hold onto. Prayerfully pleading with God that He met my dad in those last moments, and just like the Bible story of the thief on the cross, that Jesus said to my dad “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Because as Scripture says, the first will be last, and the last will be first. I pray, that in those final days, my dad accepted the grace Jesus so graciously offered him. It’s the hope I hold onto. The hope of Jesus.

To me, to Live Brightly is to accept Jesus as Savior, have a personal relationship with Him, to live freely in His love and grace, and to let His light shine through you. It’s to say YES to God’s best, and to be in awe, as you watch Him transform your heart.

Lord, align our hearts with your best. Help us to Live Brightly in you. Thank you for your love, grace, forgiveness, joy. Thank you for the hope we have in you. I pray that you’d speak now, to anyone who longs to hear your voice. Transform them, in you.

Brightly,

Paige