Jennifer Saake

It has been just over 14 years since I had to begin re-learning how to communicate, after multiple catastrophic strokes. For the first few years, my memory was so bad that I could not complete a sentence without forgetting what i was trying to say.  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”  - John 3:16 Next week will mark 5 years since I first watched Susan Heck's  A Call To Scripture Memory  video and started trying long-passage Scripture memory as “brain training” for ongoing stroke recovery. (I clearly know that the date was Dec. 10, because this date marks a landmark related to our first daughter, Noel Alexis, who was born directly from my womb into Heaven back in 1994.) Brain training was only the start. After a decade of infertility with recurrent losses (multiple miscarriage and adoption losses), the failure of the business where we had hoped to raise our children (...

I, Jennifer Saake , stumbled into the online world in my mid-early 20s, around 1995 or '96. As you may have noticed, I've been fairly quiet this past couple of years. Here's why. After processing my own journey online for so long, last year I sort of ran out of words and went into public hibernation. As I prepare to once again start fresh in an attempt to plunge back into the blogosphere, here's my backstory, divided into about 10 sub-headings so than you can skim topics. (Many of the headings are linked to more detailed pages.): Infertility, Miscarriages, Adoption Losses Three years in, our infertility and loss journeys became lived out in the public eye, as God allowed me the incredible privilege of interacting with tens of thousands of other grieving women, both through  Hannah's Prayer Ministries  and then, a decade later, with the publication of  my first book , Hannah's Hope: Seeking God's Heart in the Midst of Infertility, Miscarriage, & Adoptio...

I'm told that, due to copyright issues, I legally must tell a story that includes a recipe, rathan than being able to directly publish My Family's Very Favorite Banana Bread recipe. So here is my story... Tears are close to the surface today. It doesn't take much for them to spring into my eyes.  A kind word. A well wish. A verse of the Bible...  October 25, 2011. This was our "before and after moment," the single event that defines our family's history. My life has never been the same since. Nor my husband's life. Nor our children's... Yesterday was hard, reliving countless hospital memories I don't care to revisit, time paralyzed in the memories (some of being literally, physically locked in the confines of a mind unable to communicate movement signals to my body). Yes, diagnosed PTSD. The early hours of this morning I tossed and turned, desperately wanting to sleep through this whole da...

I had a different post planned for today. Actually, I've been carefully researching, designing, and typinging on my laptop, two different posts, for the past four days. I'll likely still post those later within the next few weeks, but today I just don't have the heart to.  So I'm winging it from my telephone, laying on my back, holding the phone steady by threading the pop socket Rick recently bought me through my left hand that is resting on my tummy. My kids tease me about my texting methods, but I'm actually faster with just my right thumb or pointer finger on the phone keypad, than I am with my whole right hand on my computer keyboard. This won't be fancy, is likely to be rambly and unedited, but these are my two main thoughts today.  Ten years?  And overwhelming thankfulness ! Several months after getting home from the hospital, wheelchair-bound to ever leave my house, legally blind due to severe double vision (going to the movie theater was tri...