Nine Stories Project: The Stewarts

These Are The Good Days

Some stories begin in the places you would least expect.

For this family, it actually started online.

Crazy enough, Grant found her through an Instagram hashtag! Back in the days when we all used a hundred hashtags on every post, he searched #Christiangirls, which is something they still laugh about today. They aren't really sure which is more embarrassing: the fact that she used the hashtag, or that he actually searched it!

One message on Kik led to Skype calls, which led to a plane ticket a week later, which eventually led to Grant moving to be with her.

And somehow, years later, here they are. A family. A beautiful, imperfect, wonderfully ordinary family with a story that is so much bigger than the photographs I took of them.

As a photographer, I get to step into people's lives for a little while. I get to see the things that might otherwise go unnoticed, like the way a child reaches for their mom, the little jokes between siblings, or the laughter that happens when nobody is trying to make a memory. And sometimes, if I'm lucky, I get to witness something deeper.

This family has walked through difficult seasons with Julie's health, and it would be easy for that to become the defining part of their family's legacy. But it isn't.

Julie's health journey is complicated, and there are more diagnoses and medical challenges than I could possibly fit neatly into a story. She lives with a bone marrow condition that causes hypocellular marrow, chronic parvovirus B19 that also attacks her marrow, and an immune deficiency disorder. She also lives with HHT, POTS, MCAS, EDS, recurring exertional rhabdomyolysis, May-Thurner syndrome, Nutcracker syndrome, and thoracic outlet syndrome. She has survived a past stroke in the right basal ganglia and lives with a rare neuromuscular condition caused by a genetic variant that has similarities to Myasthenia gravis and MS, but still doesn't have an official name.

That is a TREMENDOUS amount of weight for one person, one marriage, one family to carry. But between MANY doctors appointments, the babies homeschooling, and life in general, spending time with this family, you don't walk away thinking about a list of diagnoses. You walk away thinking about a mom who loves her children, a wife who loves her husband, a woman who loves the Lord, and a person who is determined to make the most of the life she has been given.

They have made a very intentional decision not to let illness become the center of their children's childhood. They adjust. They make things work. They change plans when they need to and find another way when the first way isn't possible. They try not to say no simply because something is harder.

Because childhood is happening right now.

They don't want their children looking back someday and remembering all the things they couldn't do. They want them to remember the things they did: the backyard, the dancing, the silly jokes, making dinner together, running through the splash pad, and watching their children create, build, and dream up little worlds of their own.

They want their kids to remember a mom who laughed, who played, who loved deeply, and who made the most of a good day. And perhaps most importantly, they want their children to know that their mom's health is something she walks through, not something that defines who she is.

I love that distinction because there is so much more to a person than the hardest thing they are carrying. Julie wants her children to see someone who loves the Lord, loves people, loves community, loves to laugh, and loves life. Someone who chooses joy, who speaks life and hope even when circumstances are difficult, and who keeps going.

And that determination isn't something that appeared out of nowhere. There is another incredible story woven into this family's history: Grant's mama, Valerie Stewart.

Valerie had a rare lung cancer, breast cancer, brain cancer, and multiple brain tumors, including one the size of a grapefruit. She lived with stage 4 cancer for TWENTY YEARS. Twenty years of facing something that could have easily consumed her story, and yet her life became so much more than her illness.

I think there is something powerful about knowing that kind of strength is part of a family's story.

We inherit more than names and traditions. We inherit stories of the people who came before us, the ways they endured, the ways they loved, and the ways they kept going when life became incredibly hard. Those stories can become reminders that we are capable of more resilience than we sometimes realize.

As I listened to Julie talk about motherhood, one thing became especially clear to me: her children are not an interruption to her story. They are part of the reason she keeps writing it.

Julie told me that she used to wonder how people managed the logistics of raising children while living with the limitations of poor health. But now her perspective has completely changed. She doesn't know how people do this without kids, because they are her greatest motivation. They are the reason she wants to get better. They are the reason she keeps pushing forward through the pain and uncertainty.

And on the days when she can't do very much, she can still hold them. She can still snuggle them. She can still let them know that Mommy is there. Her children have even visited her during infusions, curling up beside her and giving her the kind of comfort only her babies can give her.

Sometimes motherhood isn't about what you can accomplish, but simply your presence. Your arms. Your attention. Your willingness to be there. I think that's something we all forget sometimes. We can become so focused on creating the big memories that we overlook the little ones.

But children don't necessarily need elaborate vacations or expensive experiences. They need us to look up from our phones. They need us to listen to their stories. They need us to laugh at the joke that wasn't actually funny. They need us to sit on the floor. They need our full attention. They need to know that we see them.

And this family is trying to do exactly that.

There's a verse in Proverbs that says, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." As I listened to her talk about her children, I couldn't help but think of that verse. There is so much healing found in joy, in laughter, in being together, and in making ordinary days feel special simply because you are paying attention to them.

 Psalm 118:24 says "This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it."

Not the perfect day. Not the day when everything has been figured out. Not the day when the health struggles are over. This day. The one right in front of us.

I think that is one of the greatest lessons her children will learn by watching her. That God is our foundation. That He is faithful when life is uncertain. That we can be honest about hard things without surrendering our hope. That we can walk through suffering without allowing it to steal our joy. That we can choose gratitude, keep loving, keep laughing, keep going, and ultimately trust that God is still good.

I hope when these children are older, they look back on this season and see their mom's health journey as only a small part of the story. I hope they remember the good days, the silly days, the dancing, the dinners, the backyard adventures, the creative projects, the laughter, and the snuggles.

I hope they remember that their parents did everything they could to protect their childhood from being consumed by something they couldn't control. And I hope they see God's goodness woven through all of it, because that is what Julie hopes to leave with them.

Not a legacy of fear, but of faith. Not a legacy of limitation, but of resilience. Not a legacy of complaining about what life wasn't, but gratitude for what it was.

Grant and Julie hope they grow up knowing that the Lord is their rock and their foundation. That they can be generous even when life is hard, that they can care for others even when they are struggling, that they can be adaptable, that they can be brave, and that they can live with joy. She hopes they learn that they can trust God with every part of their story, even when they don't understand it.

Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not unto thine own understanding."

James reminds us to "count it all joy" when we face trials, not because the trial itself is joyful, but because God can use even the difficult things to produce something beautiful in us.

As a photographer, I think about that often. Photographs are, in a way, little markers of the things we don't want to forget. They hold the evidence of a season. They remind us what someone's hands looked like when they were little, how a child fit against their mother's chest, how their laugh sounded in their face, how tiny their fingers were, and how everyone stood together in one particular season of life.

We take photographs because we know, even while we're living them, that these moments won't stay. The children will grow. The backyard will change. The family will move into another season. The little things that feel so ordinary today will one day be the things we would give anything to step back into.

That is why photographs matter so much to me. Not because every photograph needs to be perfect, not because everyone needs to look at the camera, and certainly not because life needs to look more beautiful than it really is. I believe photographs matter because they let us remember. They let us come back. They preserve the little pieces of a life that we were too busy living to fully notice at the time.

And sometimes, photographs become proof of something we needed to remember about ourselves. That we were there. That we loved deeply. That we laughed. That we made the most of what we were given. That there was beauty in the middle of the hard season, too.

When I look at these photographs, I don't just see a family being photographed. I see a mother who is determined to make the most of her good days. I see children who know they are deeply loved. I see a husband who stepped onto a plane after a few Skype calls and somehow found himself building a life with the girl behind a slightly embarrassing Instagram hashtag. I see the legacy of a grandmother who lived twenty years with stage 4 cancer and left behind a story of incredible strength. And I see a family choosing to live fully in the middle of circumstances they cannot always control.

Most of all, I see a family choosing joy. And I see a God who has been faithful through all of it.

Psalm 118 says, "O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: because his mercy endureth for ever."

And maybe that is what I hope these photographs give this family years from now. A reason to pause. A reason to smile. A reason to remember. A reason to tell their children the stories of where they came from and the people whose strength helped shape them. And a reason to say, once again, "Look what the Lord has done."

These are the good days. And they are worth remembering.

If you read this far, THANK YOU! Thank you for enjoying my 9 Stories Project. I can't wait to share the next one!

With Love,

Savannah

Northwest Georgia Family and Motherhood Photographer

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