The Why

We often talk about work as the thing we do to earn a living... the profession we list on a form, the business we build or the title printed beneath our name. We measure it in hours, accomplishments and income. When we ask one another, “What do you do?” we usually expect an answer that fits neatly into a sentence.

The Beauty of Choice

Someone once asked my son what I do for work. His answer was simple: “Whatever she wants to.”

I laughed when I first heard it, but the more I thought about his answer, the more meaningful it became. In many ways, he was right. I get to choose work that brings me joy and, hopefully, creates joy for the people with whom I share it. There is tremendous beauty in that choice.

I do not say this to boast. I say it with a genuinely grateful heart because I know what a blessing it is to shape my days around work that enriches my life rather than merely filling my time. Life has not always been easy, and the path that brought me here was certainly not straight. There have been seasons shaped by responsibility, loss, uncertainty and simply doing what needed to be done. Perhaps that is why I no longer take the freedom to choose... or the life surrounding that work... for granted.

Lately, I have been considering the question beneath my son’s answer: Why do we do the work we do?

Work That Cannot Be Measured

Certainly, we work because there are bills to pay and responsibilities to meet. Money is necessary. It provides security, creates opportunities and helps us care for ourselves and the people we love. But I believe some work feeds something within us that money cannot measure.

Meaningful work makes us curious. It gives us a reason to pay closer attention. It brings us into rooms we might never have entered and introduces us to people whose stories become woven into our own. It carries us to new places, creates experiences and gives us something meaningful to share. The work changes us while we are doing it.

Sometimes that work takes the form of art. Art allows us to express what cannot always be easily explained. It can preserve a memory, hold a story or give form to something we have carried silently within us. It creates a place where another person can recognize a piece of their own story and feel less alone. At its best, art helps people feel seen, held and heard. It reminds us that something does not have to be loud or practical to be meaningful.

Sometimes the greatest reward is not what we produce or earn. It is the person we meet along the way, the conversation that lingers long after it ends or the moment someone feels seen because something we offered reached them at just the right time. It is collaborating with a creative friend to make the most thoughtful gift we can imagine for someone who is grieving. The finished gift matters, but so does the love held within it... the desire to help a hurting friend feel remembered and cared for.

The Substance of a Life

The richness of this life is also found in moments that have little to do with what we traditionally call work. It is encountering a 91-year-old Marine and his dog while walking a trail and pausing long enough for our paths and stories to meet. It is having coffee with a friend at our favorite coffee shop, sharing a meal with people I love or receiving a message from the friend who thinks of me whenever the moon is full or something beautiful is happening in the sky.

It is having a supportive family and partner who make room for who I am and who I am still becoming. It is the love of a church family and the comfort of knowing I have praying friends. It is my five-year-old great-niece running toward me and wrapping me in a hug every single time she sees me. She does not care what I have accomplished, what I have earned or what I managed to cross off my list that day. She is simply happy that I am there.

And at the end of the day, wealth can be as quiet as stepping outside and listening to the sound of night settling around me.

These moments may not look significant on a ledger, but they are the substance of a life.

The Work of Loving Well

Not all important work happens within a profession. Some of the most meaningful work we will ever do happens within our relationships. It is the work of showing up... of listening, forgiving, encouraging, praying and making room for one another. It is sitting beside someone when there are no words that can make things better. It is tending our friendships, our families and the love we have been given. It is helping the people who cross our paths know they are seen.

Some family members are given to us through blood, history and shared beginnings. Others enter our lives along the way and become family through choice. They are the people who stand beside us through changing seasons, celebrate what is being born in us and help carry us when life becomes too heavy to hold alone.

A Different Measure of Wealth

When I think about wealth, this is what I see: I do not measure it only in dollar signs, bank accounts or possessions. A bank statement may tell me what I have accumulated, but it cannot measure the quality of the life I have been blessed to live.

My wealth is found in the people with whom I share this life, the places our paths take us and the experiences we create together. It is found in unexpected conversations, familiar tables, shared meals, open doors, prayers spoken on my behalf and arms that are always happy to welcome me. It is being present enough to recognize, This is one of the good days.

My wealth is also found in the path I get to walk. It is the freedom to remain curious about where that path may lead next and the ability to choose work that brings joy, meaning and connection into my life and the lives of those who share it with me. I do not take that freedom for granted. The work itself matters, but so do the people it brings into my life, the places it carries me and the experiences that unfold because I was willing to follow where it led.

Perhaps that is why we do the work we do... not simply to make a living, but to make a life. A life filled with meaning, rich in connection and open to the beauty around us. A life in which we remain present to one another and recognize the blessing of being here together.

At the end of my life, I do not believe I will measure my wealth by how much I accumulated. I will measure it by the love that moved through my days, the lives that touched mine, the moments I was awake enough to notice and the people who shared the journey with me.

The Why Beneath It All

So when my son says that I do “whatever I want to,” I receive his answer with humility and a grateful heart. I get to choose work that brings joy, and I get to share that joy with others.

I am grateful for this life. I am grateful for the path I get to walk. And I am grateful to finally understand that my why is not a title, product or accomplishment.

My why is to live awake, love people well and create meaning from the moments we share... so that, in whatever way our paths cross, people might know they are valued, feel held and be given the space to be truly heard.

By that measure, I am wealthy indeed.

A Sanctuary of Sound

Airport Mesa Sedona AZ July 2025

Some memories don't seem important when they're happening.

Only years later do you realize they were quietly preparing you for something you could never have imagined.

One of those memories takes me back to an anniversary gift.

Before Brian's ALS diagnosis, we treated ourselves to the first and only couples massage we would ever have together. I invited a massage therapist into our home, hoping for a relaxing afternoon to celebrate another year together.

When the massage ended, she quietly packed up her table, gathered her things, and left for the evening.

Yet it wasn't the massage we kept talking about.

It was the music.

Neither of us had ever heard anything quite like it.

The haunting voice of a Native American flute. The steady heartbeat of gentle drums. Horses running across open land. Rain falling. Thunder rolling across the sky.

There was something about those sounds that settled both of us in a way we couldn't explain. We spent the rest of the evening asking each other, "What was that music?" We wanted to hear it again, but we had no idea where to find it.

Life moved on, as it always does.

The memory stayed with us, but the music seemed to disappear.

Then we lived with ALS.

When someone is diagnosed with ALS, the disease doesn't enter one life. It enters an entire family. It reshapes routines, rewrites dreams, changes conversations, and asks every person who loves them to learn a new way of living. Brian carried the diagnosis, but together we carried the journey.

Anyone who has walked beside someone with ALS knows that it asks for everything. It slowly takes away movement, speech, independence, and eventually even the smallest tasks most of us never think twice about. As a caregiver, you spend countless hours trying to make someone you love just a little more comfortable. Sometimes success isn't measured in milestones. Sometimes it's measured in a peaceful breath... or a few precious hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Those moments become treasures.

Years after Brian's diagnosis, we were wandering the streets of Sedona when something familiar reached my ears.

At first, I could hear it only faintly in the distance.

The flute.

The gentle drumming.

Floating on the desert air.

I stopped walking.

Brian brought his wheelchair to a halt.

We looked at each other and smiled. We didn't need to say a word.

We simply followed the sound until it led us to a small shop with its front door standing open, the music drifting gently out onto the sidewalk.

Before we looked at a single thing in the shop, we asked, "What is this music?"

The shopkeeper smiled and pointed us toward a small display of CDs by John Huling.

We gathered all four albums they had and carried them home with us.

You can experience a sample of his music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCsNm_-Qnx0,

If you love it you can purchase directly from his website. https://johnhuling.com

Those recordings became part of our evening routine for years to come. I still listen to them even now.

During those years of living with ALS, we discovered something that brought Brian a kind of peace that very little else could. It became something we both looked forward to.

More often than not, it was one of John Huling's recordings quietly filling our home.

And sometimes it wasn't music at all.

Sometimes it was the gentle rhythm of falling rain. The distant rumble of thunder rolling across the sky. The soft conversation of the wind chimes outside our window swaying with the breeze. Nature became part of the soundtrack of those days, and somehow those simple sounds seemed to invite the same quiet peace.

Looking back, I realize our home became a sanctuary of sound. Whether it came from a flute, a guitar, a distant thunderstorm, or the wind dancing through the chimes outside, each sound carried the same quiet invitation.

You can rest now.

We never thought of it as therapy.

We simply knew these sounds brought a peace that nothing else seemed to offer.

Whatever we chose, something shifted.

His body relaxed. His breathing became easier. The tension that had become such a familiar companion seemed to loosen its grip, if only for a little while.

Most importantly, he rested.

In those final years, restful sleep was no small gift.

It became one of the greatest gifts we could hope for.

Years later, while studying sound therapy, I came across the research that explained what we had experienced.

There was something deeply comforting in discovering that what we had witnessed wasn't simply wishful thinking or the desperate hope of someone trying to ease the suffering of a loved one. There was a growing body of research helping explain why sound could gently support the nervous system. Science gave language to something our hearts had already experienced.

The nervous system is deeply responsive to rhythm.

Our brains, our breath, our heartbeat, and even the subtle oscillations within our bodies naturally begin to synchronize with steady external frequencies. Researchers call one aspect of this entrainment. Rather than forcing the body to relax, sound gently invites it toward a more regulated state.

Nothing mystical.

Nothing exaggerated.

Simply the remarkable intelligence of the human nervous system responding to vibration.

Sound never cured Brian's ALS.

It didn't restore the muscles the disease had taken. It couldn't stop the progression. But it gave him something equally meaningful.

Comfort.

Presence.

Relief.

And sometimes enough calm that sleep could finally arrive.

As caregivers, we often feel helpless because we cannot fix what is broken. We want to remove the suffering, yet so often we cannot.

What we can do is create moments. Moments where fear loosens, where pain quiets, where a body that has been fighting all day finally remembers what peace feels like.

Those moments matter more than we sometimes realize.

Looking back, I don't believe this work began when I enrolled in a certification program. I believe it began years earlier, while we were living with ALS. The training simply gave a name to something my heart had already learned beside Brian.

Years later, that same heart led me to Jim, and together we completed our certification in sound therapy. I often think this work really began long before either of us ever opened a textbook. It began in our home, with Native American flute music softly filling the room while the man I loved finally found a little rest.

Caregiving prepared me to understand that comfort is not always the same thing as curing.

Sometimes caring for someone means letting go of the need to fix what cannot be fixed and choosing instead to simply be present. To create an environment where the nervous system can soften, where the body can exhale, and where the soul can find a moment of rest.

That understanding has changed the way I view wellness entirely.

We often chase dramatic transformations. We search for the breakthrough, the miracle, the one thing that will make everything different.

Yet some of the most profound moments happen quietly.

A gentle melody begins to play. Rain begins to fall. The wind chimes answer the breeze. A room grows still.

The nervous system remembers a rhythm it had almost forgotten. Not because disease has disappeared. But because, for a little while, peace has entered the room.

You don't need training to offer this to someone you love, or to yourself. You simply need permission to let a sound — any sound that feels like rest — fill the room and stay a while.

If you've ever walked beside someone living with illness... or if you're carrying more than anyone realizes... my hope is that you'll remember this.

Sometimes healing doesn't arrive as a cure.

Sometimes it arrives as a softened breath, a quiet room, the sound of rain against the window, a favorite melody, or simply someone willing to sit beside you while you listen.

Perhaps the greatest gift we can offer one another isn't the answer, but a place where the soul finally feels safe enough to rest.

Sunset at Airport Mesa, Sedona AZ August 2011