The Kind of Love That Shows Up

I am genuinely in awe of the way Tim loves me. Not because he always says the perfect thing or because our life is some fairytale where everything is easy, but because of the way he shows up for me. The way he sees something that matters to me and somehow makes it matter just as much to him. The way he will pour every ounce of himself into making something happen simply because he knows it will make me happy. I don’t know that I will ever fully understand how I got so lucky, but this weekend reminded me just how extraordinary the man I married really is.

We’ve spent the better part of the weekend completely overhauling my sewing room. What started as a vision in my head, a collection of ideas, and a whole lot of dreaming turned into something more beautiful and functional than I could have imagined. And while I certainly had a hand in bringing it all together, the sheer amount of physical labor, problem-solving, determination, and love that Tim poured into that room absolutely blows me away. He moved furniture, assembled pieces, figured out how to make things work, and kept going long after I know his body was telling him he’d had enough. Today he can barely move, and I know every aching muscle is a reminder of how hard he worked. But not once did he suggest we just leave something unfinished or come back to it another weekend. He was determined to see it through.

And as if that weren’t enough, there was my new sewing machine. He wasn’t going to be satisfied until we had picked it up, brought it home, and gotten it set up in its new space. He knew how excited I was about it, how much I had researched and debated and second-guessed myself over choosing the right machine. And somehow, even after an exhausting weekend of transforming an entire room, my excitement still mattered enough to him to keep going. It wasn’t just about getting a machine onto a table. It was about watching me finally get to enjoy something I had dreamed about.

I think that’s the part that gets me the most. He doesn’t have to share my passion for quilting to understand how much it means to me. He doesn’t have to understand every feature of my sewing machine or why I get so excited about fabric and cutting tables and storage solutions. He just has to understand me. And he does. He sees the things that bring me joy, the things that give me a creative outlet when the rest of life feels overwhelming, and he does everything in his power to help me make room for them.

There is something incredibly humbling about being loved that way. Sometimes I look at him and genuinely wonder what I ever did to deserve someone who gives so much of himself to making my world a little better. I know love isn’t something we’re supposed to earn, and marriage certainly isn’t about keeping score. But I still find myself feeling like I could never possibly give back as much as he gives me. Not because he asks for anything in return. In fact, I think that’s what makes it so remarkable. He does these things simply because he loves me.

And I hope, more than anything, that he feels that same kind of love coming from me. I hope that in the ordinary moments, the difficult seasons, and all the little things that make up our days together, he knows that I would move mountains for him too. I hope he knows how deeply I appreciate not just what he does for me, but who he is. I hope he never mistakes my occasional frustration, my distracted mind, or the chaos of everyday life for anything less than an overwhelming love for the man who stands beside me through all of it.

Maybe that’s one of the things I’m learning about this season of life. Love doesn’t always look like grand romantic gestures, elaborate vacations, or perfectly planned surprises. Sometimes it looks like a man spending an entire weekend on his hands and knees assembling furniture, making measurements, moving things around for the tenth time, and refusing to quit because he knows how much the finished room will mean to his wife. Sometimes it looks like exhaustion, sore muscles, and a new sewing machine sitting exactly where it belongs.

And sometimes it looks like me, standing in the middle of a room filled with all the things I love, realizing that the most beautiful thing about it isn’t the furniture, the organization, or even that beautiful new sewing machine.

It’s the love that went into making it happen.

I don’t know what I did to deserve Tim. But I do know that I never want to take for granted the privilege of being loved by him. And I pray that every single day, in a hundred little ways, I make him feel even half as cherished as he makes me feel.

Because if there’s one thing I want him to know, it’s that he is so much more than the man who makes my dreams come true. He is one of the greatest dreams I ever had come true.

Blessings y’all – A

Making Room For The Life I’m Living

Making Room for the Life I’m Living

I am not a hoarder. Never have been. In fact, since perimenopause decided to amplify my OCD tendencies and shine a great big spotlight on my ADHD, I’ve become even less tolerant of clutter and things that don’t have a purpose. I like things organized, I like things to have a home, and I really don’t like unnecessary stuff taking up space. At least, that’s what I’ve always believed about myself.

Tim and I have spent the entire weekend overhauling my sewing room, and what was supposed to be a fun project to create a beautiful, functional space for my ever-growing quilting obsession has unexpectedly turned into something of an emotional journey. As we’ve emptied drawers, moved furniture, opened boxes, and rearranged what feels like every square inch of that room, I’ve found myself asking the same question over and over again. Why am I saving this?

I’m not talking about the fabric, quilting supplies, or the ridiculous number of projects I have running through my head at any given time. Those things have a place in the life I’m living right now. I’m talking about the photographs, the souvenirs from trips, the little keepsakes, and the random things that have followed me through multiple moves and different chapters of my life. Things that have absolutely no practical purpose anymore but somehow feel impossible to part with because of the memories attached to them.

The biggest stumbling block this weekend has been my grandmother’s ironing cabinet. From a practical standpoint, it makes absolutely no sense to keep it. It’s too small to be particularly useful for the amount of pressing I do when quilting, the door opens in the wrong direction for where I’d need to put it, and after spending time in both the attic and the garage, it’s definitely seen better days. It’s not especially pretty anymore, it doesn’t fit the new layout, and there are a dozen reasons why getting rid of it would be the logical decision. But every time I look at it, I can vividly remember sitting in Mom’s sewing room as a little girl, watching her iron PawPaw’s shirts on that very ironing board. I can still picture her standing there, going about an ordinary task that probably seemed completely insignificant at the time. It’s funny how the most mundane moments of our childhood can become some of the most precious memories we carry into adulthood.

And that’s where things get complicated. Because that cabinet isn’t just an old piece of furniture to me. It’s a connection to a person and a time in my life that I can never revisit. But the more I’ve thought about it this weekend, the more I’ve started questioning whether keeping the physical object actually does anything to preserve the memory. I don’t need the cabinet sitting in my sewing room to remember Mom ironing PawPaw’s shirts. That memory is so clear in my head that I can close my eyes and see it without any help from a piece of furniture. So why does the thought of letting it go feel like I’m somehow losing a little piece of her all over again?

The same question applies to so many other things I’ve come across this weekend. Photographs of my children when they were little, souvenirs from trips taken in another chapter of my life, keepsakes connected to Fred, and things that remind me of people who aren’t here anymore. I can spend hours looking through these things, remembering who we were, where we went, and what life looked like before everything changed. But no matter how many things I keep, they aren’t going to make my children little again. They aren’t going to bring Fred home. They aren’t going to give me another afternoon with my grandmother. Those chapters are over, whether I’m ready to admit it or not, and keeping every physical reminder doesn’t change that reality.

So at what point does holding on to things stop being a way of keeping the people we love close and start preventing us from making room for the season of life we’re actually living? That’s the question I keep coming back to, and I genuinely don’t know the answer. I don’t want to erase the past or pretend those people and experiences weren’t incredibly important parts of my life. Quite the opposite. They helped shape the person I am today. But I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life surrounded by things that remind me of what used to be while struggling to make room for what is.

Of course, my brain doesn’t work through these things in any kind of orderly fashion. My ADHD brain takes one perfectly reasonable thought, bounces it off another, and before I know it, I’ve got a hundred thoughts ricocheting around like ping pong balls that nobody can control. One minute I’m trying to decide whether an old ironing cabinet deserves a place in my newly designed sewing room. The next I’m remembering my grandmother, then my kids when they were little, then Fred, then wondering where on earth all the years have gone. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I remember I’m supposed to be organizing fabric, but now I’m standing in the middle of the room holding something I haven’t looked at in ten years, wondering why I can’t bring myself to put it in the donation pile. It’s exhausting, and I’m sure Tim has wondered more than once this weekend how a simple room makeover managed to turn into such a complicated emotional exercise.

I know he doesn’t really understand it, and I don’t expect him to. Tim isn’t particularly attached to things. He’s much more practical about possessions, and if something no longer serves a purpose, he’s perfectly content to let it go. In a lot of ways, I envy that. I wish my brain could look at an old piece of furniture, recognize that it doesn’t fit or function the way I need it to, and simply move on. Instead, I see the people, the places, and the moments attached to it. I see the little girl sitting in her grandmother’s sewing room. I see the young mom raising her children. I see the wife who had an entirely different life before this one. And suddenly getting rid of an object feels a whole lot bigger than just clearing out some clutter.

But here’s the other side of all of this that I keep trying to remind myself of. I have a wonderful life right now, too. I have Tim, who has spent his entire weekend helping me turn a room into a space I’ll genuinely love spending time in. I have grown children building lives of their own, a granddaughter who has brought an entirely new kind of joy into our family, and a creative passion that has become such an important part of who I am. There are new experiences to have, new places to explore, new quilts to make, and memories I haven’t even begun creating yet. This chapter of my life deserves space just as much as the ones that came before it.

Maybe that’s what I’m struggling to figure out. How do you honor the past without letting it take up so much room that the present has nowhere to settle? How do you decide which things are truly treasures and which things you’re keeping out of some misplaced sense of obligation to the memories attached to them? And perhaps most importantly, how do you convince your heart of something your logical brain already knows? That letting go of an object doesn’t mean letting go of the person who once owned it, the life you once lived, or the love you still carry for both.

I don’t have a neat and tidy answer to any of those questions. I’m still standing in the middle of a half-finished sewing room trying to figure out what stays and what goes, while my brain bounces between excitement over the new space and sadness over the things I’m considering letting go. Some of those things will absolutely stay, because they bring me joy and deserve a place in my home. Others probably need to find a new home, even if making that decision comes with a little sadness. And I’m beginning to think it’s okay for both of those things to be true.

What I do know is that I started this weekend trying to make room for a new sewing machine, better furniture, and a more functional space to create. I wasn’t expecting to find myself confronting how tightly I’ve been holding on to pieces of the past or questioning whether the things I’ve saved are actually helping me remember or simply making it harder to move forward.

I still haven’t decided what to do with my grandmother’s ironing cabinet. Maybe I’ll find a way to make it work, or maybe I’ll finally decide that its purpose in my life has been fulfilled. Either way, I’ll always remember sitting in that sewing room watching her iron PawPaw’s shirts. That memory has survived decades, moves, marriages, children growing up, and more life changes than I could possibly count. I suspect it’s strong enough to survive without the cabinet, too.

Maybe making room for this season of my life doesn’t have to mean closing the door on all the seasons that came before it. Maybe it’s simply learning that I can carry the memories forward without having to carry every single thing that goes with them.

And maybe, for now, that’s enough.

Coming Home Different

I knew this trip would be special. I knew we would see beautiful places, meet interesting people, eat incredible food, and make memories that would stay with us for years. What I didn’t expect was to come home feeling different. Not dramatically different, and not in a way I can neatly explain, but shifted somehow. Somewhere between unfamiliar streets, long days at sea, conversations with people we hope to see again, and mornings when there was absolutely nowhere I had to be, something in me finally got quiet. I had forgotten what that felt like.

Before we left, I was anxious about almost everything. I worried about what I was leaving behind, what might happen while I was gone, what I might forget, and all the pieces of everyday life I normally keep carefully balanced. Even as we started the trip, part of my brain was still at home, mentally running through lists and responsibilities. Feeling like I had abandoned people who were gonna go through major things while we were gone. But there is something about travel that slowly loosens your grip on all of that. You can only stand in front of so many beautiful places, wander through so many unfamiliar streets, and look out across so much open water before the noise starts to lose some of its power. The things that seemed so urgent back home begin to feel a little smaller, and eventually you realize the world kept turning without your constant supervision.

At some point, I actually rested. Not the kind of rest where you sit on the couch while checking your phone, answering emails, thinking about laundry, or mentally preparing for Monday, but the kind where your body and your mind both begin to understand that nothing is required of you in that moment. I think that may have been one of the greatest gifts of taking a longer vacation. So often we try to squeeze rest into five or seven days, but the first few days are spent getting there, recovering from travel, and adjusting to being away. Then we try to fit in everything we want to see and do, and just about the time we finally begin to relax, we are thinking about packing, flights, work, and everything waiting for us at home. This time there was enough time to move past the excitement and exhaustion, enough time to stop counting the days, and enough time to truly unwind.

There was also the wonder of meeting new people and seeing places I had only known through photographs or stories. We shared conversations with strangers from different places and different walks of life, wandered through cities layered with history, tried new foods, laughed at things that went wrong, and woke up not always knowing exactly what the day would bring. Travel has always reminded me how big the world is, but this trip reminded me how easy it is for my own world to become small when I am buried in routines, schedules, responsibilities, and expectations. There is so much life happening outside of the little circle we move through every day, and sometimes it takes leaving home to remember that.

Maybe that is why coming home feels so complicated. I missed home. I missed my own bed, familiar food, familiar routines, and the comfort of knowing where everything is. Yet as the trip came to an end, I also felt an unexpected anxiety about re-entering normal life. There are alarms, schedules, work, appointments, chores, responsibilities, and endless things that seem to need an immediate answer waiting on the other side of vacation. I found myself wondering how quickly the version of me who had finally learned to slow down would disappear once everyday life started demanding my attention again.

That may be the biggest thing I brought home with me: the realization that I don’t want to lose that version of myself. The woman who could sit still(ish) without feeling like she should be doing something else. The woman who wandered without needing every moment to have a purpose. The woman who looked around instead of constantly looking ahead. The woman who allowed herself to rest without feeling guilty about it. I think that is also why I came home already anxious to travel again. It isn’t because home isn’t good, and it isn’t because I want to escape my life. It is because travel reminds me of a version of myself that gets buried too easily in the middle of everyday living — a version that is curious, present, open, rested, and a little lighter.

Maybe the goal now isn’t simply to start planning the next trip, although I certainly want to do that. Maybe the real challenge is figuring out how to bring some of what I found out there back into my life here. To protect quiet moments instead of filling every empty space. To stop treating rest like something that has to be earned. To remember that not everything is urgent and that life does not fall apart simply because I step away from it for a while. Most of all, I want to remember how it felt to slow down enough to notice where I was, who I was with, and the life happening right in front of me.

I left home anxious about going. I came home anxious to go again. Somewhere along the way, I remembered just how much wandering changes me, and maybe that has always been the point.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

Today Is Mom’s Birthday

Today is my grandma’s birthday. We called her Mom.

My mother was 17 when she had me and we lived with my grandparents in my early years. I grew up hearing her be called Mom and it stuck. Somehow, that name fit her perfectly.

Birthdays after someone is gone are strange things. They don’t announce themselves loudly, but they sit with you all day. They show up in quiet moments—when you’re folding laundry, when you smell something familiar, when your hands are busy and your mind wanders back to her without asking permission.

Some of my deepest comforts came from Mom. Sewing, for one. My love of sewing—of fabric, and texture, and making something useful and beautiful with my hands—came straight from her. When I sew now, it feels like a conversation that never really ended. Every stitch carries a little bit of her patience, her practicality, her quiet creativity. It still feels like being close to her, even all these years later.

Then there’s the food. I miss her slumghetti—that wonderfully imperfect, comforting dish that somehow tasted like home no matter how simple it was. No one else makes it quite the same, and maybe that’s the point. It wasn’t just about the meal; it was about the care behind it, the way she made it for me as many times as I asked as an act of love.

Some of the moments I miss most are the smallest ones. When I was little and didn’t want to nap, she’d let me hold her ring finger while she told me to “rest my eyes.” I can still feel it—how safe that felt, how the world quieted down just enough. That tiny gesture held so much comfort. It was her way of saying, I’m here. You’re okay.

Mom had that rare gift of making you feel steady just by being present. Not the dramatic kind of safe—the quiet kind. The kind where the edges of the world soften. Where you don’t have to explain yourself. Where being loved is as natural as breathing.

I think about the lessons she taught without ever formally teaching them. How love looks like showing up. How strength can be gentle. How kindness doesn’t have to be loud to be powerful. How family is built on consistency, not perfection.

There are days I wish I could tell her who I’ve become since she left. About the life I’m building. About the ways her influence still shows up—in my hands, in my kitchen, in the way I care for the people I love. I think she’d smile at that.

Sometimes I catch myself doing something and think, That’s Mom. A habit. A phrase. A moment of patience I didn’t know I had. And when that happens, the ache softens, because it reminds me she’s still here—stitched into who I am.

Today, on her birthday, I miss her deeply. I miss her hands, her food, her quiet reassurances. But I’m also grateful. Grateful for a love so strong that it still shows up in the smallest moments of my life.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

I still hold your hand—just in different ways now.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

O Holy…Yah All That

Somewhere around the time you have your first go round with grief Christmas loses it’s first piece of the magic. By the second, third, or anywhere there after Christmas becomes a field of land mines to be navigated carefully in order to get from December 1st to December 31st in one piece. To come out of it anywhere close to sane without having a) lost a ton of weight b) quit your job or your family or c) stepped off the nearest cliff. You have days where you feel good. You do all the things – shop for the presents, plan the traditions, listen to the music. And then you have the others days….

Those days are the ones you have to watch out for. The days where you hope your tribe is near and their intervention is swift. Where the tears (or the rage) come so quickly it takes your breath away.

I remember, clearly, the first Christmas that was different. It was Christmas of 2014. My grandpa had passed in May and sometime in that summer I had shut off feeling. Stuffed everything in a box because something about his death reminded me, daily, that I was going to lose Fred and Mom (my grandma). Looking back I know now that was when I should have started my counseling journey, but you know, I was busy raising kids and taking care of everyone else first. Before that Christmas I was THE Christmas person. Traditions for the kids, Christmas music before Thanksgiving, more presents than would fit under the tree, kids having to have a stocking box because I got too much for their stocking, all the things. I pray my kids didn’t notice how much had changed for me that year but I’m learning now just how astute my children were so I know they did.

Fast forward to Christmas 2017. The year we lost Fred. We flat didn’t do it that year. I took the kids, and one of my might as well have been my kids, and boarded a ship. Started a new tradition of running away. Though the ships always celebrated Christmas something about not being at home where all the memories were made it easier to endure. COVID forced us home for one Christmas and I am positive I cried through the whole thing.

Despite having endured the loss of Mom this year – I am staying put for Christmas. I refuse to have my baby girl go through this holiday alone. But beyond that – I’m going to prove to myself how much work I have done. That I can do this. I know I am stronger now than I have ever been though there have been many days in the first 13 of this month I have questioned that – I’ll be honest. (I also am hightailing it out of town right after Christmas but that’s my reward.)

In the meantime, I’m going through the usual cycle of drowning in memories, experiencing daily roller coasters of emotions, and learning to be patient with myself in riding it out. But what I am NOT doing is stuffing it in a box. Ignoring my pain. It is exhausting the expectations to be “jolly” when you’d rather crawl under the covers and cry.

Grief is a monster that once it has you – it never lets you go. It may ease it’s grip sometimes, you may be able to put a leash on it and contain it for a while, but it’s like a second skin you have to learn to live with. If you were lucky enough to love and be loved? That grief is an indicator of the hole their absence left in your life. I have lost three wonderful people so far in my life – each loved me beyond measure – so I’ll carry their love and learn how to ride out the tough times and cherish the memories no matter how long it takes me to learn how.

If you are grieving this holiday season, be patient with yourself. If you know someone who is grieving, love them through it. Just being there is more help than you know. The holidays aren’t the stuff they portray in magazines and on TV. For some, they are a hellish 31 days to endure. Be kind. Be sensitive. Be thankful if you still feel their magic. Most of all…blessings.

Amy