Janine Toomey | The Grit and Grace Project

Janine Toomey

Janine loves to see the fading image of her career as a sole practitioner CPA in the rearview mirror as she continues to put months, years, and miles between licensed tax work and shinier prizes like coffee dates and writing groups. She lives with her husband in Bend, Oregon with their above-average yellow Labrador Retriever, Pearl. The two sons of this memorable and life-tested marriage live within hours and a few mountain ranges. Both sons are unbelievably handsome and married to exceptional women. Janine has been an active and maturing member of a local faith fellowship in Bend. Discipleship and walking side by side with younger women has been a priority of hers for years and she now is releasing words onto paper continuing that voice and fulfilling her love for writing.

Your Autumn Years Are a Beautiful Season of Life—Blaze Them In Color

By Janine Toomey / Purpose

All dressed up and no place to go. This is the dilemma of toddlers across the world. They exist in a perpetual state of readiness to go somewhere, anywhere, and not be invited to go along. I am the youngest of four children, six years behind my three siblings who are all 18 months apart. The door was always shut in my face as everyone raced out to ride their bikes, play with their friends, and do all the things I was too little and too unwanted to do. It was my eternal and infinite holding pattern. Driven to Succeed My mantra as a toddler (and sometimes still) was “When I get older, I’m gonna ____________.” When I was in elementary school, […]

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Mind Your Trace: Is the World Better Because of You?

My inner critic, never at a loss for words, says “leave the place better than you found it.” Where she gets her information, and when she chooses to spring it on me is a mystery, but I listen up because sometimes she is simply right. The impetus to leave a place better than I found it would relate to cabin rentals, campsites and other places of temporary refuge. As it relates to backpacking in the wilderness or camping Anywhere, USA, it is always the goal to leave no trace. Not everyone operates by this standard, sadly, but I do my part to pick up after myself (and often those that came before me) so the deer, bunnies, and timber tigers don’t have