experience – Page 2

The Ugly Side of Moving

I’ll preface this with I am well aware that I am beyond blessed. The manner in which all the pieces of the current season of life fell into place is nothing short of God’s grace. But for someone with anxiety being in a constant state of chaos has a price.

My sweet husband keeps telling me “it’ll be ok”. Along with “we’ll get there” and “it’s not a race”. What I can’t convey, what I don’t seem to be able to put into words, is that living in constant chaos makes me feel unsafe. I have not one place – at home OR at work – that I can get a deep breath. Ironically the only place that is “normal” right now is my truck….and being in it as much as I have been lately is very not normal.

At work the pressure is unbearable. My own relentless self expectation to not let anyone down who is counting on me on top of what’s flowing downstream because of trying to get an entire office moved left me in my office crying today. When I come home there is something that needs my attention or to be put away every where I turn. Sheer exhaustion means I break, drop, or misplace almost everything I touch. Never mind accuracy at what I’m attempting to process at the office. Tim had to go tonight to work on the old house so it will be ready to be put on the market. In my efforts to get SOMETHING productive done I managed to dent the drywall and break one of my favorite lamps in the space of 30 minutes.

My brain feels like what is left of one of my favorite lamps.

Tim keeps telling me to relax. Trying to explain to him that my mind won’t LET me relax when everywhere I look there is something that needs to be done is a concept that doesn’t register with most people. I know, logically, that moving is probably one of the most stressful things we do as an adult. I have moments where I can catch a glimpse of what life will be like if we ever get to the other side of this mountain. But lack of sleep and being in a constant state of chaos and overwhelmed is robbing some of the joy that I think I should be getting from this. I come across as angry when I know I’m not. It seems to be the only emotion that is coming out with any regularity.

Tim says he can fix the dent in the drywall. And I have another lamp. And work will always just be work. Just wish I could relax, get some more sleep, learn how to leave the piles at work and at home without the doomsday feeling….and most definitely I am never moving again. Ever.

Blessings y’all – Amy

Fearful and Fretful

Can you remember a single “ah ha” moment when you realized that life was happening to you instead of you being in control of your future? I haven’t had a lot of those but there are times God takes out a billboard in my face to make sure I don’t miss it.

All around me people I love are struggling. Some with the pain of recent loss of loved ones. Family with new challenges that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Others still facing the same old cycle of anxiety and depression kicking their butt. It is my habit to take on these emotions and let them guide me to a place that isn’t healthy for me while I attempt to make sure people I love and hold dear are “ok”.

I was programmed from a very very early age that my role was to take care of others. As I look back on the last couple of weeks through the filter of seeing myself in others’ eyes I have realized that I’ve mistaken fear for selflessness. It’s been EASIER to live a life taking care of others than it has been to push myself out of my comfort zone. It’s been EASIER to base my decisions on where I presume I am most needed instead of what is best for me.

My counselor says F.E.A.R. means “False Evidence Appearing Real”. How easy it is to convince myself I “have” to do something because I’m needed, the only person who can do it, blah blah blah. The evidence is that those around me would get by without my help. Perhaps even stand stronger if I’d stop trying to do it for them. How easy it is to let fear allow me to put what I need or know will make me happy on the back burner so someone I care about can be.

Tim and I are have some major life decisions in front of us. I’m paralyzed with fear over them. Dumbfounded by how much the childhood mantra I live with is playing in my head – you don’t deserve that, you aren’t good enough for that, you can’t do that. It’s cast a giant light over my life as a whole (maybe this is a mid-life crisis?) and I don’t like what I see. Fear has guided too many of my decisions and kept me in the survivor role instead of the drivers seat. I so badly want to change that….

Anyway, I’m rambling. The message here is focus on life and not the fear. The fear will always be there – how much control I give the fear and the fretting is only determined by me. It is such a hard habit to break…but I am determined. Mostly. If my body would cooperate that would be fabulous – panic attacks that leave me on the bathroom floor aren’t so fun.

What decisions in your life have you looked back and realized were only fear based?

Blessings Y’all – Amy

Will they ever come back into fashion?

I’m gonna age myself here but I can remember driving down the road with my grandpa and it being more uncommon to hear someone lay on their horn than it is now. As I learned to drive, and doing so in a small town no less, basic acknowledgment when someone let you in or moved to the shoulder to let you pass was commonplace. Where a hand written note as a thank you when given a gift was a given not an option.

We all know that everything comes back into fashion in one way or another. How many kiddos are wearing fanny packs slung across their body (like it’s a new idea) or bell bottoms? 😆

I guess the thought puzzling me today is – will kindness and good old fashioned compassion ever become fashionable again?

I miss the days where men took off their hats when they walked indoors and especially when they sat down at a table to eat. Where men held open doors for women without a second thought. (One of the things I adore about Tim is he opens the car door every single time we go anyplace – no matter the weather.) Where please, thank you, and yes sir no sir rolled off of our children’s tongues because they knew if their mama found out they didn’t there would be hell to pay. Where shaking your opponents hand at the conclusion of a game was more important than a participation trophy. Where a child in the classroom wouldn’t ever even think about sassing their teacher lest she call his parents.

Will any of this ever come back in style? Kindness and compassion? Feeling sorry for the mama with the screaming baby instead of judging her because her overtired two year old can’t contain himself any longer while she is just trying to get stuff for dinner on the way home after a 12 hour work day? Where people stop when they see an accident happen instead of going on by because they don’t want to get involved? Or whip their phone out to record a situation instead of helping?

As a mama I truly hope so. Seeing the changes in the world just in the last twenty years makes me afraid for what it will be like by the time my kids are my age.

What good old fashioned values do you miss most?

Blessings y’all – Amy

Celebrating Love & Friendship

Someone said once that time heals all wounds. I’d be willing to bet that person hadn’t REALLY had loss in their life. Don’t get me wrong. Life is moving on. In so many fabulous ways. But as I stare down the barrel of several memory anniversaries this week I’m a little melancholy.

Turns out…time never heals grief. It eases the sharpness as you struggle to breathe. It dulls the edges in a way that makes living come back in ways you can’t imagine possible in the immediate aftermath. But time does not ever heal grief. Because grief can’t be healed. Each year the calendar rolls dates around that tug the fine hairs under the band-aid you’ve put on the pain. You find ways to brace for it. To get through it. To ask for help. But on those days the pain is very much there.

TimeHop has begun reminding me of the season of life that the kids and I were in this time six years ago. This week on Friday would have been my sixteenth wedding anniversary. As I mull that over…how many years Fred has been gone versus here a knot forms in my stomach. February 4th would have been my grandpa’s birthday.

I can honestly look back and know that these impending dates don’t send me spiraling into the hole they once did. I can proudly say that is because I’ve done the work. I’ve invested the energy in myself to know that I am a survivor. But that doesn’t mean I’m not tremendously glad that when the idea came up to run away this week that I wasn’t completely and totally on board. Spend a week away with a man who loves me and makes room for the days that I’m not quite ok? Yep. Spend a week doing one of the things I love most with friends who are like family to me? Yep. Sign me up.

Add surprising all those friends to the list (my favorite thing to do to people I love) and I’m all in.

We boarded the Carnival Celebration today. To celebrate being loved. Not once not twice but by three amazing men. My PawPaw who contradicted all the crappy awful abusive men my mother chose. Fred who took a broken girl, gave her an instant family, and was patient while she loved too hard and held on a little too tight. And this wonderful man who walks beside me now. Who quietly and patiently lets me know every day that I am worth being loved. That bruised and slightly damaged as I may be I deserve to be loved as hard as I love.

We are celebrating friendship. These that I have made in all the years I’ve traveled. The special relationships I have that I constantly confuse the mess out of Tim because he can’t remember all the names but he loves them all because they make me happy.

Love hard friends. Life is short and precious and can change on a dime.

Blessings – Amy

What Are We Doing to Our Oceans?

Have you ever seen an 8’ tall octopus made out of the trash we are putting into our oceans? What about an eagle with a 17’ wingspan? I have. And while my artist heart sings at the beauty of these sculptures my environmental heart is breaking at the eye opening amount of trash that is making it into our oceans. Truthfully there are things making it to our oceans that I couldn’t have even fathomed winding up there. Everything from toothbrushes to motorcycle helmets to pregnancy tests. Not to mention the absurd amount of flip flops, discarded coolers, and water bottles.

An organization called Washed Ashore is raising awareness through art. To date they have processed 60,000 lbs of plastic and have created some magnificent sculptures to entertain the eye while educating us on what is going into the sea. The exhibit is currently on display in Galveston (through March 5th) and the city turned it into something fun. You can “check in” at each sculpture and when you have seen 9 of the 20 you can submit it to the visitors center for some Galveston swag. We didn’t really care about the swag but searching out the sculptures took us to parts of the island even my 30 year island loving heart hadn’t been. We had tons of fun doing this but it set my brain whirring.

Irving has reduced it’s trash pick up day to once a week and really doesn’t promote doing recycling. I live in a neighborhood that I have several neighbors who still loyally put out their blue bags (yeah!) but since I wasn’t sure if they were actually making it to a recycling center I was hesitant. Let’s face it – it DOES take work to reduce your footprint on the environment. Much like eating organic or cutting down on driving to help pollution – it takes concentrated effort to recycle. You have to rinse food items off plastic or metal you are recycling, break down boxes, and know what can and can’t be recycled.

But something about these sculptures this weekend reminded me how very important that effort is. As a marine life lover we’re feeding our animals trash! Why do the marine animals that are part of the circle of life that feed us and sustain us deserve that? Being frank – if it’s going in their bodies it’s going into ours in some form or fashion.

Back to what can I do different? While Tim and I were talking we sat and we ordered a dual trash can that will allow us to easily get trash where it goes and recyclable materials in those precious blue bags. Doing some research I realized that the food we throw away in the trash winds up in landfills creating gas that is getting into the air. So we also are going to begin composting again. I did this years ago and enjoyed it – just gotta get set back up again.

Full disclosure: I was already on the beginnings of a composting kick.

I fully admit I contribute to the water bottle problem. With the things I put in my water grabbing one and going is easiest. I am the chief supplier of water to the office – also in the form of plastic water bottles. We’ve resolved to get a Brita filter for the fridge and switch over to a reusable water bottle when at home or at the office. If we have to use plastic on the go we’ll be able to recycle it when we get home.

None of these feel like big enough changes to help with the size of the problem I saw on display this weekend but I know that if I make a small change and every other person who saw what I saw makes a change it WILL bring change. I could write a book on all the ways our oceans and marine life are in trouble but I’ll instead just ask that you check out the site and make any small changes you can to protect the world we live in.

Washed Ashore – Art to Save the Sea

Blessings y’all – Amy

Did You More Than Survive?

For those of you that dread the holidays – I’m talking to you! How are you feeling today? Did you thrive yesterday or just survive? Or did you, like me, perhaps find a new version of Christmas?

I woke up today reflective. Appreciative of getting through yesterday without tears and without pain that takes my breath away. Those were new. I went to bed last night without an aching back or aching feet from having cooked all day – we ordered in breakfast to chill-ax with presents longer. I didn’t stress out over “did I remember to text everyone” or “did she or didn’t she REALLY like my gift”? I think some of the easier is coming with age and some of it was from being surrounded with two people who love me beyond all things – it was about the time together. This was Tim’s first we-aren’t-leaving-our-PJ’s-today Christmas and he was all about it. With the kids grown and all doing their own thing it does lend a simplicity to the holidays that think I could get used to.

Do not get me wrong. I am very glad to put another holiday season behind me. I read one of my TimeHop posts from 8 years ago today, the first Christmas without my grandpa, and it brought a lump to my throat. If I had to pinpoint an exact moment when the holidays became a struggle that year would be it. I expected this year to be more challenging since we said goodbye to Mom in 2022. There was a moment when we dug out one of her dishes for the cranberry sauce where I know my angels were watching because Em and I both could have lost it and instead we were able to mention Mom and smile.

For those that don’t know me – surprises are my thing. Giving and receiving. This year’s gift exchange held surprises both physical and emotional. Listening to Em and Tim work together on Christmas Eve on my stocking was priceless. Opening gifts that a) I had no idea what they were and b) couldn’t have guessed if I tried was amazing. (You mom’s know what I’m talking about – we do the giving not the receiving at the holidays!)

My OCD brain gets me even when I’m not trying…didn’t mean to match his wrapping paper and PJ’s!

Tim reminded me again how very much he pays attention when I talk. Renovating the greenhouse so I can grow all the green things is on our January to do list but he got me an AeroGarden. “Something I knew you wanted but wouldn’t buy yourself.” Not gonna lie – it was set up before the cooking got started. Those moments of realizing God has brought someone into my life who loves me when I’m having a really bad day or listens when I talk are humbling.

I was asked a couple of times yesterday if I was glad I was home for Christmas. My initial gut response was still “no”. But having slept on it (or attempted to sleep on it since I’ve now been up since 3 am) I think the answer is yes. Yesterday was peaceful. And that, more than anything, was all I wanted for Christmas. To not be so lost in grief I felt incapable of breathing is perhaps the greatest gift of all.

Blessings y’all – A

A Whale Named Barnacles

My timing is always crazy but as I sit in my steamy beach town my thoughts are on the whale I met in September in Alaska. Hahaha. Maybe because this 2000+ lb whale made enough of an impression on me that we named Tim’s car after her. Let me tell you about our whale excursion and a whale named Barnacles.

The tour we took in Juneau in September was a whale watching tour and my greatest wish was to see an orca. When we boarded the bus our guide said that while it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility he had only seen orcas six times since April (and it was September). But the whale gods were with me. We weren’t on board the boat 15 minutes and the captain got a call that an Orca named Captain Hook had been spotted. Named such because his dorsal fin had gotten caught in something at one point and was curved over in an unnatural way. He was a scout orca for a transient pod – scouting food for his pod while they were safely some distance away. There aren’t enough words to describe the feelings that went through me when my eyes landed on that whale. There were tears and there was a video sent to my baby girl. Like most ocean things whales are OUR thing.

Back to Barnacles. After Captain Hook moved on they took us into a cove a few minutes away and there were numerous humpback whales breaching the surface. Even with many whale watching boats in the area the silence and the majestic-ness (yes that’s a word lol) of being still and listening to these huge creatures blow out of their blowholes was amazing. The air was still, the scenery behind them just stunning, the eagles soaring above them, and these huge creatures closer than you can even imagine was a once in a lifetime experience. The guide had told us to take as many pictures as possible. We were on a scientific type tour where they tried hard to match the whale tails to their records to see which of the whales they had identified were in the area so they can track their patterns, babies, etc.

Never did I ever anticipate that I would get a good enough picture of a whale’s fluke to be able to match one in the book. Mind you, I was using my iPhone. But after an hour of watching these amazing creatures breach and swim around us we headed back to shore. While we did they passed around a book for us to compare our pictures with the known whales in the area. I was stunned to realize I had a picture of a mama whale named Barnacles. (For that matter so was the guide!). She is a 57’ whale, one of the largest in the world, identified in 2007. They didn’t say if she was identified as a baby whale or not but geez that makes her at minimum 15 years old.

I went into the Alaska trip skeptical I would like the cold. Knowing the whale excursion would likely be my favorite. I was wrong on one and right on the other. I can’t wait to go back to Alaska. Made a promise to the baby girl that we wouldn’t go back without her. One I am already chomping at the bit to fulfill.

If you have nothing else on your bucket list – put Alaska on it. It’s worth it.

Blessings y’all – Amy

Here’s to new experiences!

How many of y’all know that AirBnb has an “Experiences” component to their site? That almost any town you are visiting has something fun to offer that is usually some hidden gem or something you wouldn’t normally think of doing? I can’t remember exactly when I found this now favorite thing but it is something I look into everywhere I go now. My most recent vaca into Nashville was no exception!

This adorable sign was hanging in Nicole’s (our host) kitchen

Our first stop in Nashville (literally) was a biscuit making class. We left Memphis early Monday morning to make an 11:30 class where we were lucky enough to have the class to ourselves. Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I definitely was sure making biscuits is harder than it turned out be. I’ve steered clear of them because I grew up with the notion that they were a chore. Our host, Nicole, made them not only seem easy but also fun. Her kitchen is dreamy…one all us girls want…and so organized. The class flowed because she had all the prep work done. Just like you see on the cooking shows!

One of our finished products…makes ya hungry don’t it?

My favorite that we made by far was the biscuits and gravy. True southern biscuits in gravy that are the right color and not greasy or lumpy or anything of the things you get from those that just think they can make gravy. Of course, having well made biscuits under them probably helped! We got to leave with leftovers to take to the hotel for munchies. Besides the biscuits and gravy we made a flavored biscuit and some sweet biscuits and toppings. Definitely did not need lunch after…did I mention we got to have mimosas during all of this?

Probably the AirBnb experience I was the most nervous for of the week was the one we did Wednesday. We booked a Photowalk with Christy. One – I don’t like having my picture taken. Two – I definitely don’t like to do it out in the open where people walking by can stare at me. Three – did I mention I don’t like having my picture taken?

There wasn’t a worry to be had though. Five minutes into our experience our host Christy had us relaxed and talking. Christy took us around on foot to several of the murals down in the Gulch – including the butterfly mural that everyone is so crazy about these days. Christy gave us tons of tips on things to see and do in Nashville. Introduced us to locals and seemed to be a favorite in the area.

When we got the pictures back a few days later I was surprised by how many of them I liked! (Also by how flat and gray my hair was but that’s a story for another day!) As the weight as come off it’s been easy to see the me that has been hiding under 80+ pounds that are now gone. Still takes a bit to pull her out but she’s in there. Christy did a great job at getting us to relax, smile, and capture more than a little of the amazing time we had in Nashville. This is one experience I am so glad we pushed outside the box to do and will definitely look to do again in Nashville and probably in other cities.

Ok, here’s the links for both experiences.

https://www.airbnb.com/experiences/290704

https://www.airbnb.com/experiences/276316

Check those out! Blessings y’all!

Amy