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Vacation Limbo

I have become convinced that there is a period of time that exists just before every vacation that deserves its own name. It’s not part of normal life, but it’s not vacation either. It’s that strange one- to two-week stretch where you’re still going to work, still doing laundry, still paying bills, still living your everyday life, but mentally you’ve already left.

I’ve decided to call it “Vacation Limbo”.

The funny thing is that the months leading up to a trip seem to disappear. You book something six months in advance and before you know it, you’re looking at boarding passes and excursion confirmations wondering how it got so close so fast. Then, somehow, the final week arrives and time completely changes its behavior.

The days get longer.

Not literally, of course, but it certainly feels that way. A Tuesday suddenly feels like it should have been followed by at least three Thursdays before ending. A single workweek feels capable of lasting an entire month. The trip is close enough that you can almost touch it, yet somehow those last few days seem to stretch endlessly between you and departure.

I think part of the problem is that your brain has already moved on. Mine certainly does. I’ll be sitting in a meeting and suddenly find myself wondering whether I packed enough sunscreen or if I remembered to order the luggage tags. I’ll be standing in line at the grocery store mentally calculating how many mornings are left before I leave. Ordinary life continues, but it has competition.

Everything becomes part of the countdown. The last dentist appointment before vacation. The last Costco run. The last Friday at work. The last time I need to remember what’s for dinner. Life becomes less about the calendar date and more about how many steps remain before I can zip up a suitcase and head out the door.

What’s interesting is that I don’t think Vacation Limbo is really about the vacation itself. I think it’s about anticipation. As adults, we spend so much of our lives focused on responsibilities, obligations, deadlines, appointments, and all the things that need our attention today. Vacation Limbo gives us permission to look ahead. It gives us something exciting sitting just over the horizon.

Maybe that’s why those days feel so long. Part of us is already living in the future. We’re imagining the places we’ll see, the people we’ll spend time with, the meals we’ll eat, and the memories we haven’t made yet. We’re trying to stay present while simultaneously daydreaming about what’s next.

It’s a ridiculous feeling, honestly. Nothing has changed, yet everything feels different. You’re still sleeping in your own bed, driving the same roads, and following the same routine, but your mind keeps wandering off like an impatient child asking, “Are we there yet?”

And if I’m being honest, I kind of love it.

The waiting is frustrating, but it’s also a reminder that I have something worth waiting for. There are certainly worse problems to have than being excited about what’s ahead. So while I may complain that this final week is moving at the speed of molasses, I know exactly what the real issue is.

I’m already gone. My suitcase just hasn’t caught up yet and someone forgot to tell my email.

Blessings y’all – Amy

The Songs That Hit Deep

A few weekends ago, I was on a girls’ trip in the Texas Hill Country. We were driving down a two-lane highway, the kind that stretches out in front of you with no particular urgency, and Cody Johnson was blasting through the speakers. My best friend and I were singing at the top of our lungs, laughing, missing half the words, and completely unconcerned with how ridiculous we sounded. It was one of those simple moments that doesn’t feel significant at the time, yet somehow you know you’ll remember it forever.

As the miles rolled by, I found myself paying attention to two songs in particular: ‘Til You Can’t and The Fall. Not because they were new to me, but because certain songs seem to evolve as we do. They mean one thing when we’re young and convinced we have all the time in the world, and something entirely different after life has taught us otherwise.

If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
If you’re gonna love somebody
Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
‘Til you can’t

Loss has a way of changing the lens through which you see everything. Before grief, songs about taking chances, loving deeply, and embracing life can feel inspiring. After grief, they feel urgent. They become reminders that none of us know how much time we have with the people we love or how quickly the life we know can change. For those of us who have buried someone we never wanted to lose, those messages aren’t theoretical. They’re lived experience.

There was a time in my life when I would have given almost anything to avoid the storm that was coming. If someone had offered me a glimpse into the future and shown me the heartbreak, the fear, the sleepless nights, and the years of learning how to carry grief, I would have begged for a different path. I would have chosen certainty over pain every single time.

But somewhere between then and now, something shifted.

Sitting in that truck, singing those songs with the windows down, I realized that knowing everything I know today, I would still do it all again.

The ride was worth the fall
The fall was worth the smiles
The smiles were worth the tears
Tears were worth the miles
Miles were worth the pain
Pain was worth it all
It’s all worth this life
Life is worth the ride
The ride is worth the fall

That may sound strange to anyone who hasn’t experienced profound loss, but I suspect those who have will understand immediately. I wouldn’t choose the pain because the pain itself has value. I would choose it because the love was worth it. I would choose it because every beautiful thing that came before the loss mattered. And I would choose it because surviving that storm shaped the person I became afterward.

If I hadn’t lived through those years, I wouldn’t have the life I have today. I wouldn’t be Tim’s wife. I wouldn’t be the mother I am. I wouldn’t be a Mimi, experiencing a kind of joy that my younger self couldn’t even imagine. I wouldn’t have learned that people can break into a thousand pieces and somehow still find a way to rebuild. I wouldn’t understand how grief and gratitude can occupy the same space, each making the other more visible.

The truth is that so much of who I am today was forged in circumstances I never would have chosen. That’s one of life’s great paradoxes. We spend so much time wishing away the hard chapters, only to discover later that they became part of the foundation for some of the most meaningful things in our lives.

Maybe that’s why those songs lingered with me long after the trip ended. They aren’t really about loss. They’re about life. They’re about recognizing that every day is an opportunity to show up fully, to love people well, to take the trip, make the call, say the words, and stop assuming there will always be another chance. They remind me that while none of us can avoid the falls, we can decide what we do with them.

As we continued down that highway, in the pouring rain, friendship, and music, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Not gratitude for the storms themselves, but gratitude for what waited on the other side of them. Because while I would never wish those experiences on anyone, I can honestly say that the life I have today—the people I love, the perspective I’ve gained, and the joy I now recognize in ordinary moments—exists because I survived them.

Sometimes a song is just a song. And sometimes it’s a reminder that the hardest chapters of our lives don’t get the final word. Sometimes it’s a reminder that while we may not get to choose every storm, we do get to choose what we do with the life that’s waiting for us after the clouds finally clear.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

The Sunday Scaries

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about the Sunday scaries and wondering why they seem to hit me harder than they used to. It’s a strange phenomenon because nothing has actually happened yet. The work week hasn’t started. No difficult conversations have occurred. No crises have landed in my inbox. And yet, sometime on Sunday afternoon, I can feel my body begin preparing for battle.

My shoulders tighten first. Then comes the restlessness. I’ll find myself unable to fully enjoy whatever I’m doing because my mind has already left the weekend and started living in Monday. By Sunday evening, my thoughts are racing ahead through the entire week, trying to anticipate every possible problem that could arise. A difficult meeting becomes a catastrophe. A simple conversation becomes a confrontation. A challenge becomes a disaster before it has even had a chance to exist.

What fascinates me is how convincing these fears feel in the moment. As I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, every worry seems completely reasonable. My brain presents each one as an urgent issue that requires immediate attention. Surely if I think about it long enough, I can solve it before it happens. Surely if I prepare for every possible outcome, I can somehow protect myself from disappointment, stress, or conflict.

The problem is that by the time Monday arrives, I’ve often lived through the week once already. I’ve attended the meetings in my head. I’ve had the arguments. I’ve received the criticism. I’ve rehearsed the failures. My body responds as though these things have already happened, even though they exist only in the stories my mind has created.

I’ve often heard people say that anxiety is worrying about things that will probably never happen. While there is certainly truth in that, I’ve realized that explanation has never fully resonated with me. Part of what makes the Sunday scaries so difficult is that life has taught me that not every fear is irrational.

There have been moments in my life when the thing I was worried about actually happened. There have been phone calls I didn’t want to answer, conversations I dreaded having, and losses I desperately hoped I could somehow avoid. Some of the hardest chapters of my life arrived after periods of knowing they might be coming. When you’ve lived through enough heartbreak, enough uncertainty, and enough grief, your brain begins to believe that its job is to stay one step ahead of pain.

Looking back, I can see how that survival instinct developed. If I can anticipate every possible outcome, maybe I won’t be blindsided. If I can identify every risk, maybe I can prevent disaster. If I stay alert enough, perhaps I can keep the people I love safe and protect myself from being hurt again.

The problem is that a mind trained to watch for genuine threats doesn’t always know the difference between a life-changing crisis and an ordinary Monday morning. It responds to an upcoming meeting with the same vigilance it once reserved for truly difficult seasons. It treats uncertainty as danger. It mistakes worry for preparation and anxiety for control.

What I’ve started to understand is that my Sunday scaries aren’t really about the week ahead. They’re about my relationship with uncertainty. They are the result of a mind that desperately wants guarantees in a world that refuses to provide them.

The irony is that all those hours spent worrying never actually give me what I’m looking for. They don’t make me more prepared. They don’t eliminate risk. They don’t provide certainty. They simply rob me of the one thing I actually possess in that moment, which is the Sunday evening sitting right in front of me.

While anxiety constantly reminds me that difficult things are possible, experience has taught me something equally important. I’ve survived every difficult season that has come my way. I’ve survived grief. I’ve survived loss. I’ve survived disappointment, uncertainty, conflict, and change. Not because I successfully predicted every outcome, but because when life demanded something of me, I found a way through it.

Maybe that’s the lesson I’m slowly learning.

The goal isn’t to convince myself that nothing bad will ever happen. Life has already proven otherwise. The goal is to trust myself enough to know that whatever happens, I will deal with it when it arrives. I don’t need to carry the entire week before it begins. I don’t need to solve Wednesday’s problems on Sunday evening. I don’t need to sacrifice today’s peace in an attempt to purchase tomorrow’s safety.

The truth is that this moment deserves my attention just as much as whatever waits for me tomorrow. The conversation with my husband. The dog curled up nearby. The last few quiet hours of the weekend. The sunset outside the window. These things are real. The disasters my mind is rehearsing are, for the most part, only possibilities.

Monday will come whether I worry about it or not. The week will unfold in ways I can predict and in ways I can’t. What I can control is whether I spend Sunday evening living the life that is actually happening or preparing for one that may never arrive.

And if experience has taught me anything, it’s this: I am far stronger than my anxiety gives me credit for. The same strength that carried me through the hardest days of my life is still here. I don’t need to spend Sunday night rehearsing every possible disaster to be ready for whatever this week brings.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

The Cost of Relaxing

This past weekend, I stood at a fence in the Texas Hill Country and watched the sun sink behind the trees. The sky was painted in shades of orange and gold, and for a little while there was nowhere I needed to be. No emails demanding a response. No office politics or drama. No laundry. No mental checklist scrolling endlessly through my brain. Just a beautiful sunset, a good friend, and a quiet moment at the end of the day.

As I stood there, I felt something that has become surprisingly rare in my life.

Peace.

Not excitement. Not distraction. Not the temporary relief that comes from checking something off a to-do list. Actual peace. The kind that settles deep enough that you don’t realize how tightly you’ve been holding yourself together until you finally let go.

Since coming home, I’ve been trying to understand why relaxing has always been so difficult for me. For years, I assumed I was simply bad at it. Bad at vacations. Bad at long weekends. Bad at sitting still. Even when I’m exhausted, there is a part of me that resists slowing down. But I think I’m finally starting to understand why.

Maybe I don’t struggle to relax because I don’t enjoy it. Maybe I struggle to relax because I know what comes next.

The truth is that when I genuinely relax, re-entering my normal life feels catastrophic to my mind, body, and nervous system. Within hours of getting home, my stomach was in knots. The headaches returned. My thoughts started racing ahead to Monday before Sunday was even over. It felt like my body was rebelling against being asked to step back into a life that had suddenly become much louder than it was two days earlier.

And that made me wonder if this is why vacations have always carried a strange anxiety for me. Not because I don’t want to go. Not because I don’t enjoy them. Quite the opposite. Maybe it’s because somewhere deep down I know the bill is coming due when I get back.

When you’re living inside stress every day, you adapt to it. You normalize it. You convince yourself that the tension in your shoulders, the knot in your stomach, the racing thoughts, and the constant feeling of bracing for impact are simply part of adulthood. Part of work. Part of life. You become so accustomed to carrying the weight that you stop noticing how heavy it is.

Then something happens. A girls’ trip. A vacation. A long weekend. A sunset over the Hill Country. For forty-eight hours, you set the load down.

The problem is that once you’ve remembered what it feels like to put it down, picking it back up feels almost unbearable.

I used to think that meant relaxing wasn’t worth it. Why spend two wonderful days away if you’re going to spend the next several days paying for it with headaches, nausea, anxiety, and exhaustion? Why look forward to vacations if returning home feels so difficult?

Lately, though, I’m starting to think I’ve been asking the wrong question.

Maybe the problem isn’t that relaxation makes me sick. Maybe relaxation reveals how sick stress has made me. Maybe those forty-eight hours didn’t create the contrast. Maybe they simply exposed it. Maybe standing at that fence watching the sun disappear beyond the trees wasn’t an escape from reality at all. Maybe it was the first honest glimpse of what life feels like when my nervous system isn’t constantly running a marathon.

I don’t know exactly what to do with that realization yet. What I do know is that if two days of peace can feel that good, and returning to normal can feel that hard, perhaps the goal isn’t to avoid relaxing. Perhaps the goal is to build a life that doesn’t feel so impossible to return to once I’ve remembered what peace feels like.

Blessings y’all – Amy

What the Garden Keeps

I’ve always thought gardens were about growing things. Tomatoes, roses, strawberries, herbs, flowers. But the older I get, the more I realize gardens grow something else too. They grow memories.

As I walked through my garden recently, I found myself thinking about all the stories tucked between the plants. Not the gardening successes or failures, but the people. The roses remind me of my PawPaw. The climbing trellises holding them up were once Hope’s antique iron dog bed. After we lost her, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. It sat in the bedroom for months, too meaningful to throw away but without any real purpose. Eventually, I carried it into the garden and repurposed it as support for the climbing roses planted in memory of my grandfather. If you had told me years ago that a beloved dog’s bed would one day support roses planted for my PawPaw, I would have thought that sounded ridiculous. Now it feels exactly right.

The garden has a way of connecting things that don’t seem connected at all.

This week marks nine years since I lost my first husband, Fred. Nine years. Some days that feels impossible to believe. Other days it feels like several lifetimes ago. Fred was a horticulturist. Plants weren’t simply something he enjoyed; they were part of who he was. He understood things that I am only beginning to appreciate now. He knew that growth takes patience, that seasons matter, and that some things spend years establishing roots before they ever produce blooms worth admiring. Back then, I don’t think I fully appreciated why people garden. I enjoyed flowers and pretty landscapes, but I didn’t understand the deeper pull that draws people outside day after day to tend living things.

I understand it now.

There is something uniquely comforting about caring for living things after you’ve experienced loss. Gardens teach many of the same lessons that grief eventually teaches. Nothing stays the same forever. Seasons come and go whether we’re ready for them or not. Some years bring abundance while others test our patience. Plants die back, appear lifeless for a season, and then surprise us with new growth when we least expect it. The garden never pretends that loss doesn’t exist, but it also never lets loss have the final word.

As the anniversary of Fred’s death approaches, I find myself thinking less about the sharp edges of grief and more about the ways love remains. The truth is that the people we lose don’t disappear simply because time passes. They become part of the landscape of our lives. We find them in recipes we’ve memorized, in stories we tell without realizing it, in habits we’ve picked up from them, and sometimes in places we never expected. A rose can remind me of my PawPaw. An old dog bed can remind me of Hope. An evening spent watering plants can bring memories of Fred rushing back with surprising clarity.

For a long time, I thought healing meant learning how to let go. Now I think healing may be learning how to carry things differently. The people we love become woven into who we are. They influence how we see the world, what we value, and what brings us comfort. Their absence never completely disappears, but over time it begins to exist alongside gratitude instead of only sadness.

Maybe that’s why I love my garden so much. Not because it helps me forget, but because it helps me remember. Every bloom feels like a reminder that beauty and grief are not opposites. They often grow side by side. Every ripe tomato, every strawberry warm from the sun, every rose climbing higher on Hope’s old bed feels like evidence that life continues to create beauty even after loss has left its mark.

The garden has become a gathering place for memories. My PawPaw is there in the roses. Hope is there in the trellises that support them. Fred is there in the lessons I understand now that I was too young to appreciate then. What started as a place to grow plants has quietly become a place where the people I love continue to live on.

Perhaps that’s what gardens keep. Not just flowers and vegetables, but stories. Not just blooms, but memories. Not just beauty, but love itself. And if we’re paying attention, they remind us that while life is fragile and seasons inevitably change, the people who shaped us never truly stop growing in our hearts.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

Twenty-Six Years??

Twenty-six years ago today, I started the first of only three jobs I’ve had in the last twenty-six years.

I arrived in Dallas young, hopeful, and carrying a lot of expectations. I was convinced that moving here might help repair my relationship with my mom. Like so many things in life, that story didn’t unfold the way I imagined it would. We never found the relationship I was hoping for. For a long time, I viewed that as a disappointment. Now, with the perspective that only time can bring, I see that life was busy giving me something else and I’m very much at peace with letting that relationship go.

What Dallas gave me was time with my grandparents.

Not the dramatic, movie-worthy moments. The ordinary ones. Family dinners. Holidays. Conversations I don’t fully remember but would give anything to hear again. Time around the dominos table. I got years with them before they left this earth, years I might not have had if life had taken me somewhere else. Looking back, that gift was bigger than the one I thought I was moving here to receive.

The last twenty-six years have been packed with more life than I could have imagined when I unpacked those first boxes. They gave me my children, who somehow transformed from little kids needing rides and reminders into adults building lives of their own. A precious grandchild I never expected to get to watch grow. They gave me a marriage with Fred that shaped me in ways I still recognize today. That chapter brought love, growth, laughter, challenges, and eventually grief. The kind of grief that settles into the corners of your life and quietly changes the person you become.

And then, when I least expected it, life gave me Tim.

Sometimes I think about how strange it is that some of the best things in our lives arrive after we’ve already decided we know how the story is supposed to go. Tim is my safe place, my biggest supporter, and my favorite person to come home to. He watches over me, takes care of me when I need it, celebrates my victories, and somehow still manages to make me laugh when I’m taking life too seriously. After everything we’ve both walked through to get here, I don’t take a single day of it for granted.

Professionally, these years have been just as significant. I’m approaching fifteen years with TLC, which feels impossible to write. Fifteen years. There are memories tucked into those years everywhere I look. People who taught me things, challenged me, frustrated me, encouraged me, and became part of my story. Some have long since moved on. Others are still part of my day-to-day life. Together we’ve navigated growth, change, success, uncertainty, and enough stories that I could probably fill a book.

Lately, though, I’ve become more aware of time. Maybe that’s one of the unexpected parts of getting older. Not because I feel old—I absolutely do not feel old enough to have spent twenty-six years in this industry—but because I can suddenly see the years stacked behind me. Twenty-six years ago doesn’t feel like a lifetime ago. It feels like a few chapters ago. Yet somehow, in that time, I’ve watched grandparents leave this world, children become adults, coworkers come and go, and entire seasons of life pass by before I realized they were ending.

There are days when that realization feels a little heavy. Time moves faster now than it used to. The calendar pages flip quicker. The milestones arrive sooner. The people we love get older. We get older.

But when I look back over these twenty-six years, the feeling that rises above all the others isn’t sadness. It’s gratitude.

Gratitude for the relationship that never became what I hoped, because it led me to relationships that became more than I could have imagined. Gratitude for the grandparents who loved me so well. Gratitude for the children who made me a mother. Gratitude for the years with Fred and the lessons that came from loving and losing. Gratitude for Tim and the joy of discovering that life can still surprise you.

Twenty-six years ago, I arrived in Dallas hoping for one thing.

Instead, I got a life. And while it hasn’t always been easy, I wouldn’t trade a single chapter.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

The Garden of Chaos

Lately I’ve been thinking about the different kinds of chaos that exist in my life. It’s strange because, on the surface, they should feel the same. Chaos is chaos, right? Yet one kind leaves me exhausted, overwhelmed, and searching for an escape, while the other is the very thing I run toward when I need to find peace.

The chaos in my head is relentless. It is made up of unfinished conversations, worries about tomorrow, replayed moments from yesterday, and an endless mental checklist that seems to regenerate faster than I can cross things off. It is the stress of work, the pressure of responsibilities, the fear of making the wrong decision, and the habit of carrying problems long after there is anything I can do about them. Even when I am sitting still, my mind rarely is. It races ahead, circles back, second-guesses, analyzes, and prepares for battles that may never come.

Oddly enough, I notice it most on the weekends.

You would think that after a long week, freedom would feel relaxing. Instead, there are weekends when I wake up with a restless energy I can’t quite explain. The structure of the workweek is gone. No meetings. No deadlines. No urgent emails demanding my attention. The very thing I’ve spent all week wishing for arrives, and suddenly I’m pacing around trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with myself.

There are projects I could tackle. Books I could read. Quilts I could sew. Naps I could take. Plants I could repot. A dozen possibilities stretch out before me, and somehow all that freedom leaves me feeling unsettled. My mind starts searching for a purpose, for a task, for something that feels productive enough to justify the day. If I’m not careful, I can spend half a Saturday feeling guilty for not accomplishing enough while simultaneously being too overwhelmed by the options to start anything at all.

The longer stress hangs around, the louder that chaos becomes. It starts to color everything. Small inconveniences feel bigger than they are. Rest becomes difficult because my brain is constantly convinced there is something more important I should be doing. It is exhausting to carry a mind that rarely knows how to simply be.

And then there is my garden.

If you looked at it objectively, you might call it chaotic too. The cucumbers have a mind of their own. The tomatoes are sprawling beyond their supports. Flowers spill into pathways. Volunteer plants appear in places I never intended. Some things are thriving while others are struggling. There are bugs, weeds, surprises, and imperfections around every corner.

Yet when I walk into that chaos, something inside me settles.

Maybe it’s because the garden gives me purpose without pressure. There is always something to do, but nothing that feels urgent. The tomatoes aren’t judging me if I don’t get to them today. The roses don’t care if the weeds wait another day. The garden doesn’t keep score.

Instead, it invites me to slow down. To notice. To wander.

To be present.

Somewhere between checking on the cucumbers and deadheading a rose, the noise in my head begins to soften. My attention shifts away from what might happen tomorrow and toward what is happening right now. A new bloom I hadn’t noticed before. A single white butterfly weaving through the flowers reminds me lost loved ones are near. The scent of damp soil after watering.

Sometimes it’s something as simple as picking a strawberry and eating it right there in the garden. Or twisting a ripe tomato from the vine and tasting it while it’s still warm from the Texas sun. No grocery store tomato has ever tasted like that. For a moment, all the worries, plans, and endless mental chatter fade into the background. There is only sweetness, sunshine, and gratitude.

The garden reminds me that growth is rarely neat. It twists, sprawls, climbs, and sometimes falls over before finding its footing again. It doesn’t follow a perfect plan. It doesn’t grow according to my timeline. And somehow, despite all that—or maybe because of it—it becomes beautiful.

I wonder if people are the same way.

Maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate every messy thought, every difficult season, or every moment of uncertainty. Maybe the goal is to recognize the difference between the chaos that steals from us and the chaos that gives something back. One kind leaves us drained and disconnected from ourselves. The other reminds us that life is still unfolding, still growing, still producing beauty even when things feel a little wild.

My garden has become a refuge from the noise. Not because it is orderly, but because it isn’t. The imperfections don’t bother me there. The unexpected is welcomed. Things are allowed to take their own shape. There is freedom in that.

On the hardest days, when my thoughts feel loud and my shoulders feel heavy, I find myself wandering outside. I walk among the roses that remind me of my PawPaw, check on the vegetables that seem to grow an inch overnight, and lose track of time in a space that asks nothing from me except my presence.

And every time, I leave with the same realization. The chaos in my head tells me everything is falling apart. The chaos in my garden reminds me that sometimes things are simply growing.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

The Pressure of Free Time…

There’s a very specific kind of giddiness that comes with a long weekend as an adult. It starts sometime around Thursday afternoon, when you realize there’s an extra day sitting out there waiting for you. By Friday, it feels full of possibility in a way regular weekends never quite do. One extra day somehow tricks your brain into believing you suddenly have time to become fully rested, productive, creative, organized, and caught up on life, friends, and family all at once.

The mental list starts building almost immediately. You’re going to sew. Clean out a closet. Take a nap. Water the plants. Sit outside with a glass of wine and actually relax for once. Maybe read. Maybe organize. Maybe do absolutely nothing for a little while and not feel guilty about it.

But somewhere between all the possibilities and all the pressure we quietly place on ourselves, the long weekend starts feeling less restful and more overwhelming.

At least it’s that way for me.

Because instead of simply enjoying the extra time, my brain starts trying to carefully distribute it. Even now it’s sitting here whirring trying to figure out what I’m going to jump off this chair and get done. If I spend the afternoon sewing, I probably should’ve been productive. If I spend the day cleaning and organizing, I’ll feel disappointed that I never actually rested. If I sit still too long, I start mentally calculating all the things I “should” be doing instead. If I worked a little Monday somehow my week next week won’t be so bad. And somehow having too many choices leaves me oddly stuck, drifting from one thing to another without ever fully settling into any of them.

Then suddenly it’s Monday evening. The weekend is over. The house still isn’t completely done. Half the projects remain untouched. The rest somehow didn’t feel restful enough. And despite having an extra day off, you’re still tired and somehow emotionally unprepared to go back to work.

I think part of the problem is that many of us have forgotten how to let free time simply exist without turning it into another thing to manage well. 🙋🏻‍♀️ We approach long weekends with such high expectations. Surely this is the weekend we’ll finally catch up, recharge, reset, organize life, and become the version of ourselves who has it all together.

But maybe that’s too much pressure to place on a few open days.

The older I get, the more I think the best weekends are rarely the ones where everything gets done. They’re usually the quieter ones. The ones where you laugh a little, rest a little, wander through a project because you want to instead of because you scheduled it, and maybe sit outside at the end of the day with a glass of wine realizing you didn’t maximize every minute… but you lived in some of them.

Maybe the goal of a long weekend was never to fix our exhaustion in the first place. Maybe it was simply meant to give us a little room to breathe.

Blessings Ya’ll – Amy

Putting the Scoreboard Down

I think some of our most exhausting habits begin so early in life that we barely recognize them as habits at all. For me, one of those has always been comparison… or maybe more accurately, keeping mental score.

I think it starts younger than we realize. As kids, we notice who has more chores, who gets away with doing less, who is praised for helping, and who somehow manages to avoid responsibility altogether. In our home as kids the only way to get anything positive was to work harder and wait for a pat on the head like a dog who did something good.

Somewhere along the way, many of us quietly learn to measure fairness through effort. We begin tallying who is contributing more, who is carrying the heavier load, and whether things feel “even.” At the time, it probably seems harmless. Maybe even responsible. But over the years, that mental scoreboard can become so automatic that we carry it into adulthood without even realizing it. The problem is, comparison rarely brings peace. Mostly, it brings exhaustion.

The older I get, the more I notice how much mental space comparison takes up when we allow it to. We compare workloads, responsibilities, energy, effort, marriages, homes, parenting, accomplishments, friendships, appearances… and before long, our minds are constantly evaluating instead of simply living. We become hyper-aware of imbalance. Hyper-aware of fairness. Hyper-aware of who seems to carry more and who seems to carry less. Hyper aware of those who seem to move through life without a care in the world while we’re breaking under the load of trying to be enough.

And while some level of awareness is normal, constantly measuring ourselves against other people slowly steals something important from us. It steals contentment. It steals gratitude. It steals the ability to be fully present in our own lives because part of our mind is always glancing sideways into someone else’s lane. Comparison is the thief of joy.

I don’t even think most people who struggle with comparison are shallow or judgmental. In fact, I think it often comes from being conscientious. From caring deeply. From growing up believing that hard work, dependability, and responsibility were tied to our worth and value in life. So when we encounter people who move through life differently, it can quietly (and sometimes loudly) frustrate us more than we’d like to admit.

But lately I’ve started wondering how much peace we lose trying to mentally manage fairness everywhere we go. Because no matter how observant we are, we never fully know another person’s story, capacity, struggles, personality, or burdens. And even when imbalance does exist, carrying resentment over it rarely improves our own lives. Most of the time, it only makes our hearts heavier.

I’m beginning to think peace comes from putting the scoreboard down. Not lowering standards. Not pretending effort doesn’t matter. But choosing to stop making comparison the background noise of our lives. Choosing to focus more on how we want to live than on whether everyone around us is doing things the exact same way. Choosing to focus on what we can do and letting the rest of it go. Letting someone else carry the “enough” weight for a while.

Maybe that starts with catching ourselves when comparison creeps in and gently redirecting our thoughts. Maybe it means practicing gratitude for our own lives instead of constantly evaluating someone else’s. Maybe it means spending less time keeping emotional tallies and more time protecting our peace. Maybe it means learning that we can do our best without needing life to feel perfectly “fair” at all times. Maybe it means turning it over to God in prayer and asking him to take away the weight.

Because the truth is, comparison almost never leaves us feeling lighter. Peace does.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

My Nervous System Was Never Meant to Live Like This….

There’s a kind of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix. Not the normal kind. Not the “I stayed up too late” kind. I’m talking about the kind that settles deep into your nervous system after months—or years—of constantly bracing yourself for the next thing. The kind that changes the way your body responds to the world around you.

I didn’t fully understand how much long-term stress could physically change a person until I started watching it happen to myself.

At first it looked small. Trouble sleeping. Feeling tense all the time. Irritability I couldn’t quite explain. Headaches that showed up out of nowhere. Crying unexpectedly over things that normally wouldn’t have touched me. Exhaustion so heavy it felt like I was carrying around a weighted blanket no one else could see.

Then came the hyper-alertness. Always listening. Always anticipating. Always trying to read the room before walking into it. My body stopped believing it was safe to relax. Even at home, even in quiet moments, my nervous system stayed stuck somewhere between survival mode and burnout.

And the hardest part? From the outside, you can still look completely functional.

You still answer emails. Still show up. Still handle responsibilities. Still smile when you need to. But internally, your body is sounding alarms all day long. Eventually the alarms stop feeling temporary and start feeling like your personality.

That’s what chronic stress does. It slowly convinces your nervous system that tension is normal.

I think one of the most damaging parts of prolonged stress is being surrounded by people who seem to enjoy provoking reactions out of others. The kind of people who push buttons just to see what happens. Who make subtle digs, create tension, stir emotions, or keep situations emotionally off-balance because it gives them a sense of control or power.

When you live in that environment long enough, your nervous system stops waiting for the actual conflict and starts preparing for it before it even happens.

You begin walking into rooms already tense. Reading tone changes that other people miss. Rehearsing conversations in your head before they happen. Overexplaining. Overthinking. Monitoring every expression and every shift in energy because experience has taught your body that peace can disappear without warning.

And over time, that kind of emotional vigilance becomes exhausting in ways people don’t always understand.

Especially when you’re someone who genuinely cares deeply. Someone loyal. Someone who wants harmony. Someone who internalizes tension instead of throwing it back outward.

People often talk about stress like it’s just a mental issue, but it lives physically too. In clenched shoulders. In shallow sleep. In stomach problems. In brain fog. In a racing heart while answering a simple text message. In feeling emotionally detached from people you love because your body is too exhausted to process one more thing.

I think one of the strangest parts of going through major changes around you—especially changes in leadership, environments, or emotional safety—is realizing how much stability your body quietly depended on. You don’t notice how grounded you felt until the ground shifts underneath you.

And when it does, your nervous system keeps score.

It remembers the dismissive conversations. The unpredictability. The walking-on-eggshells feeling. The emotional whiplash. The moments where loyalty stopped being reciprocated. The slow realization that you are carrying far more emotionally than anyone around you fully sees.

And yet, somewhere inside all of that, there is usually a version of you still trying to hold everything together.

I think healing starts when you stop treating your body like it’s overreacting and start understanding that it’s responding exactly the way a human nervous system responds when it’s under pressure for too long.

Maybe recovery doesn’t start with “fixing” yourself.

Maybe it starts with finally admitting that you were never meant to function in a constant state of emotional emergency. And setting boundaries to put yourself ahead of those taking advantage of you.

I’m learning that rest is not laziness. Boundaries are not selfishness. Stepping back emotionally from situations that are hurting you is not weakness. And protecting your peace does not mean you care less—it may simply mean your nervous system cannot survive another season of pretending everything is fine.

The truth is, long-term stress changes you. But maybe awareness can change you back. God, I hope so.

I miss the old version of myself — the one who enjoyed everyday life without constantly feeling braced for the next emotional hit. The one who could move through her days without feeling like she had to stay guarded, waiting to be blindsided for someone else’s amusement.

Blessing Y’all – Amy