Oklahoma Bloggers: May 2026 Archives

Jan Wilson Bost, an early-day Oklahoma City-based blogger known as the Happy Homemaker, died on May 11, 2026, at the age of 62. She was the recent recipient of a long-awaited heart transplant; a post-transplant infection took her life.

A celebration of Jan's life will take place on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, at 6:30 pm at Memorial Road Church of Christ, 2221 E. Memorial Road, Edmond, OK. The service will be livestreamed on the church's YouTube channel. Jan is survived by James, her husband of nearly 31 years, her sons Colin and Spencer, and her first grandchild.

Jan had begun writing the Happy Homemaker in February 2004, introducing her subject matter this way:

Welcome to The Happy Homemaker! We'll be learning about all kinds of things on this blog, including music, law, cooking, cleaning, children and God. Woo Hoo! Let's go!

It was an accurate introduction. Jan wrote often of her faith in Christ and how it shaped her day-to-day life. She was often profound but also whimsical: Vintage Valentine cards and old motel postcards were frequent features on her blog.

In 2005, she answered a question implicit in a search query that referred someone to her blog:

Yesterday this blog had a visitor who came from the Google search: "how to be happy as a homemaker." I don't know if she'll be back, but I've been thinking about her and decided to address her question.

The question could have many reasons. Perhaps she had career goals and now finds herself at home, at a loss for what to do with her new role. Maybe she always wanted to be a homemaker, but finds it is not all she hoped for. Maybe she's just doing research, with no emotional ties to the question. Whatever the reason, the answer is the same: you decide to be happy. (Really, "happy" is not the correct word for the situation. I'd rather use "joyful.")

No matter your situation in life, it is a temporary season. Why not make the best of it? Homemaking (and motherhood) are really fleeting, but they are important. It is as if each task you undertake is a stitch in the great quilt of comfort that covers our nation. Your family may not realize all that you do, but they benefit nonetheless....just as you benefit from the works of countless others whose work goes unnoticed by you. Take pride in your own work, not seeking praise from others.

In January 2005, Jan asked her readers what makes for good parenting:

There are a lot of good parents out there and if you ask them what it is they do to have such lovely children, they will usually just shrink back and say they got lucky. But my theory is that the parents are doing some things right and they just think everyone does those things. They don't realize that their own parents were special or that they are special. They just take some things for granted. You've seen these families. They enjoy each other, they touch each other gently, they make each other laugh.

Your mission is to find out what they are doing. "They" may be you. Dig down deep to find out what it is. It is probably something woven into your daily routines. Maybe its the way you talk to your children, maybe its how you teach, maybe its what you expect from them..... But, please be practical in your advice. "Just love them" is not enough. HOW do you put loving them into practice.

With that post, Jan shared daily checklist for parents that she'd received at Bible Study Fellowship, each item with a related Bible verse. It's worth revisiting.

I first met Jan in Oklahoma City in January 2005, at the first ever Okie Blogger Bash, a gathering of faith-friendly, generally right-of-center bloggers. Here's her account of the event. She was as delightful in person as she was in her writing. Jan, Dawn Eden, and I had sushi together after the bash, then Jan invited us to her lovely 1920s home, where we met her husband James and her two sons.

One fun memory of my blog interactions with Jan: When my wife and I were expecting our third child, I asked for reader suggestions for baby names. I ruled out "Norman," but Jan found a way around that and suggested "Moe Telle," then later added, "For some strange reason I fell asleep last night thinking, 'I should have said Jay L. Bates.'"

Jan was an attorney, but she found ways to practice her profession that allowed her to be home with her two sons as much as possible as they were growing up. She was active in her church. (A 2007 religion story in the Daily Oklahoman featured the Narnia-themed Vacation Bible School at Quail Springs Church of Christ that she and her husband directed.)

Jan played French horn for a number of ensembles, including the Oklahoma Community Orchestra, Oklahoma Composers Orchestra, Oklahoma City Symphonic Band, and the Oklahoma Haydn Festival.

Jan continued to blog regularly through the end of 2008. Happily, because she used the Blogger platform (blogspot.com), because Google acquired Blogger and hasn't shut it down (yet), and because she never took her blog offline, it's all still there. (The infrastructure of the Internet, with expiring domain names and pay-by-the-month web hosting, works against permanence.)

As Facebook took off, and perhaps as life became busier, her writing about life, faith, and family moved to social media.

In March 2025, Jan shared that she had been suffering from heart failure since 2010, that her condition had reached end-stage in the spring of 2024, and that she had been put on the waiting list for a transplant.

In late 2025, Jan began a CaringBridge site and began blogging once again. While most of her writing recorded her medical journey, she wrote about her faith, her family, and daily life, she answered questions, and she shared funny little observations. One of her entries was an article she had written for the Gatewood neighborhood newsletter about the history of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Parish and the significance of its bells.

This past February, Jan posted the text of Psalm 46 and the lyrics of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," introducing them with these words:

We should have no expectation that God grant us every wish we bring before him. His ways are higher. But one petition I'm sure He will always answer is to tell Satan to flee from us. If you wish to pray anything for me, please pray for that.

She followed up in the next post:

Several of you have reached out to me personally concerned about my current state of mind because of my last post. I can see why it appeared that that was a problem.

The point I was actually trying to make, however, is that I am concerned for you. I know most of you are praying for me to be healed. For a new heart. We all want that, but that doesn't mean it will happen. We can only hope. And while it is OK to share these wishes in prayer, we should always remember that it is God's will not ours.

If I should not live to get a new heart, or even not live through surgery for a new heart, I do not want you to lose faith. I am at peace, knowing it is a possible outcome. It does not mean that our prayers are not answered, it means we did not get the answer we hoped for.

May Jan rest in peace, rejoicing in the presence of the Savior she loved and served.

IN MEMORIAM: A fund in memory of Jan Bost has been established to benefit the Oklahoma City Symphonic Band: