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.

When Something Wonderful Still Feels Heavy

We leave for Europe soon. A trip I have dreamed about, planned for, saved for, talked about, researched, and looked forward to for what feels like forever. There are incredible things waiting for us on the other side of that flight. Places I have never seen. Food I cannot wait to try. Streets I want to wander. Memories Tim and I have been planning to make together. I know how fortunate I am to be going, and I know this is supposed to be exciting. And yet, right now, excitement is having a hard time finding room to breathe.

I feel raw and numb in the aftermath of saying goodbye to Joy. Somehow those two things can exist together. I can feel like every nerve ending is exposed and, at the same time, like part of me has gone completely quiet. The house feels different without her. Our routines are different without her. Even preparing to leave feels different because there is one little soul missing from the equation. I think grief does that. It quietly changes the shape of everything, even things that seemingly have nothing to do with the loss.

Then there are Lilah and Reba. I watch them and wonder what they understand. I wonder if they are grieving Joy too, or simply confused by another change in their world. And now the suitcases are out, which means they know something else is happening. They know those suitcases mean we leave. Maybe I am projecting some of my own anxiety onto them, but every time I look at them, I worry. Are they okay? Will they be okay while we are gone? Do they feel unsettled? Do they know we are coming back? I wish there were some way to explain all of it to them.

And apparently my brain has decided that worrying about our dogs isn’t enough. There are so many things happening in life around us right now that I cannot control. Situations involving people I love. Decisions that aren’t mine to make. Things that could change while we are thousands of miles away. I keep thinking about how removed I will be if something happens, as though being physically closer somehow gives me control I don’t actually have anyway.

That may be the hardest part for me to admit. I like knowing what is happening. I like being available. I like believing that if something goes sideways, I can step in, make a phone call, solve a problem, help somebody, or at least be present. Europe puts an ocean between me and all of that. Maybe that is part of what my anxiety is really fighting—the reminder that being nearby has never actually made me the one in control.

My body seems determined to remind me of everything my brain is carrying. I am not sleeping. My heart races when I think about leaving. I have a constant nagging feeling that I have forgotten something important. I mentally run through lists: passports, clothes, reservations, medications, dogs, work, family, flights, transfers, excursions, chargers, money—and somehow I still come away convinced there is something I haven’t thought of. It is anxiety’s favorite trick: convincing you there is one more disaster hiding just outside your field of vision if you would only worry hard enough to find it.

So I am trying to talk myself back from the ledge a little at a time. I am reminding myself that this is a dream trip. I am reminding myself how much Tim and I have planned and how excited we have been. I am reminding myself that there are beautiful moments ahead of us that I don’t want to miss because I spent them mentally standing back home in Texas. I want to look up. I want to see Europe instead of staring at my phone waiting for something to go wrong. I want to eat the food, wander the streets, take the pictures, laugh with my husband, stand somewhere impossibly beautiful and realize, We are actually here.

Maybe I don’t have to feel completely okay before I go. Maybe I can board the plane grieving Joy, miss Lilah and Reba before we’ve even left them, worry about the people I love, and still allow myself to experience something wonderful. Maybe gratitude and grief are not opposites. Maybe excitement and anxiety can sit beside each other for a while. Maybe I don’t have to solve every problem, anticipate every possibility, or make sure the entire world is perfectly settled before I allow myself to leave it for sixteen days.

Because the truth is, life will keep happening whether I am standing here trying to supervise it or walking through Rome with Tim. And perhaps part of this trip is going to be learning to let it.

Right now, I am still spiraling a little. I am still waking up with that uneasy feeling that there is something I should be doing. I am still looking at Joy’s absence, Lilah and Reba’s faces, the suitcases on the floor, and the seemingly endless list in my head and wondering how I am supposed to simply walk out the door. But I will. I will double-check the passports. I will probably check them again. I will hug the dogs far too many times. I will worry. I will cry. I will get on the plane anyway.

And somewhere on the other side of all this heaviness, there is a trip Tim and I have dreamed about waiting for us. I don’t want anxiety to convince me that I have to choose between caring deeply about everything I am leaving behind and being fully present for everything waiting ahead. I think there is room in my heart for both.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

The Price Tag of Love

There is a quote that says, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. The older I get, the more I think grief isn’t a bill you pay once and move on from. It’s a weight you agree to carry for the rest of your life because, at some point, someone or something was worth loving.

People often talk about “getting over” grief, but I don’t think that’s how it works. We don’t get over the people we’ve loved. We don’t wake up one day and realize the ache has disappeared. Instead, we become stronger at carrying it. At first, the weight is crushing. Every memory catches you off guard, every quiet moment reminds you of what is missing, and tears come without permission. Then, little by little, life keeps moving. The world assumes you’ve found your footing again.

But grief doesn’t leave. It simply becomes quieter.

I think that’s the hardest part. In the beginning, grief is loud. Later, it becomes something you carry privately. You smile. You go to work. You answer emails. You laugh at dinner. All while carrying the invisible weight of someone—or in my case this week, someone with four paws—who isn’t there anymore.

Joy has occupied so much of my heart these last few years. Caring for an elderly dog meant slowing down, rearranging routines, lifting her when her legs couldn’t carry her, celebrating small victories, and quietly wondering when love would require the hardest act of kindness. Now the house is quieter. There isn’t a little nose nudging for the cheese tax or tiny paws following me from room to room. Her snoring doesn’t fill the room at night anymore. Those little interruptions that once filled the day have become the loudest reminders of her absence.

And somehow, losing Joy doesn’t just make me miss Joy.

It brings Fred back to my heart. It reminds me of Hope. Of grandparents. Of every goodbye I’ve ever had to say. That’s the strange thing about grief—it never seems to travel alone. Every new loss reaches back and gently touches the old ones, reminding you that your heart has been here before. The weight isn’t just today’s sadness; it’s every goodbye you’ve ever learned to carry. It’s a reminder there are more goodbyes in our future with Lilah, Reba, and aging family.

If I’m honest, I’m tired of saying goodbye.

It feels like so much of my life has been marked by endings. People I wasn’t ready to lose. Pets who gave me every ounce of loyalty they had. Seasons of life that slipped away before I was ready to let them go. Sometimes I wonder how many times one heart can break before it simply grows accustomed to the ache.

But maybe that’s because love doesn’t disappear either.

The heart doesn’t make room for someone new by pushing someone else out. It stretches. Every person, every dog, every season we love leaves fingerprints on who we become. So when we grieve, we aren’t just mourning their absence. We’re carrying the shape they left behind inside us.

If grief really is the price tag of love, then I suppose I wouldn’t ask for a refund. The cost has been unbearably high at times, but so was the privilege of loving them in the first place. The more it hurts the more you know you truly loved them.

Maybe healing isn’t about learning to let go at all. Maybe it’s about learning to carry every goodbye with enough grace that it no longer keeps us from loving again. The weight never disappears. It simply becomes part of who we are—a quiet reminder that a life filled with grief is also a life that has been filled with extraordinary love.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

Loving Her Enough to Let Her Go

I’ve spent the last several months carrying around a weight that I haven’t wanted to name. It’s the kind of weight that sits in the pit of your stomach when you know a decision is coming, but saying it out loud somehow makes it real. We have made the decision to let Joy go next week, and while I know in my heart it is the kindest thing we can do for her, that knowledge hasn’t quieted the anxiety. If anything, it has made it louder.

Everyone says you’ll know when it’s time, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. There isn’t a flashing sign that suddenly appears or a single moment where everything changes. Instead, it happens so gradually that you find yourself questioning every day. She still gets excited when she sees us. She still demands the cheese tax. She still wants to be as close to Tim and me as she can possibly get. But then there are the other moments. The hesitation to be up on the bed or couch that are happening more often. The hips that no longer wants to cooperate. The accidents that seem to embarrass her more than they inconvenience us. The breathing that has become more labored. The off-putting smell on her fur because she can no longer keep herself as clean as she once did. None of those moments, by themselves, feel like enough. Together, though, they paint a picture that I’ve been trying desperately not to look at.

The hardest part of loving a dog is that we eventually have to decide whether we’re holding on because they’re still living, or because we aren’t ready to imagine life without them. Dogs will endure far more discomfort than we ever realize if it means staying by our side. They don’t complain. They don’t tell us they’re tired. They simply keep choosing us, even when their little bodies are failing them. That means the responsibility falls to us, and I think that’s one of the cruelest gifts they leave behind.

Joy has another layer to her story that makes this goodbye even harder. She wasn’t just my dog. She was Fred’s dog.

When I look through old pictures of her, I’m reminded that she has quietly carried pieces of my entire adult life. One of my favorite photos is from Christmas, with Fred wrapped in strands of colorful lights while Joy sat happily in his lap looking like she had somehow orchestrated the whole thing. It’s such a silly picture, but it captures everything about those years. Joy adored him, and he adored her. She was there for ordinary evenings, Christmas mornings, road trips, and all the little moments that never seemed important enough to photograph because we assumed there would be thousands more.

When Fred died, Joy lost someone too.

She couldn’t understand why he never came home – spent days sitting in his chair with his blanket when he was gone – but somehow she stayed beside me while I learned how to navigate a life I never expected to have. Through every hard day, every new beginning, every tear, and eventually every smile, Joy remained. Somewhere along the way, she learned to love Tim too. He never tried to replace what she had lost. He simply loved her where she was, and she made room for him in that tiny heart. Watching that happen has been one of the sweetest reminders that love doesn’t erase what came before. It simply grows large enough to hold someone new.

As we’ve talked about this decision over the last few days, I keep thinking about our upcoming trip to Europe. For weeks I found myself praying that she wouldn’t leave while we were gone because I couldn’t bear the thought of her final moments happening without us. In some ways, I think she made the decision for us. She has been telling us, gently and faithfully, that she’s getting tired. The clinginess. The falls. The slowing down. The quiet surrender of all the little things that once came so easily. Maybe loving her now means listening instead of asking her to keep trying.

There is something profoundly unfair about the fact that dogs give us every single piece of themselves, yet their lives are so much shorter than ours. Almost sixteen years somehow feels both incredibly long and impossibly short. She’s been here through two marriages, through unimaginable grief, through healing I never thought possible, through new beginnings, new homes, new routines, and all the ordinary Tuesdays in between. She isn’t just losing her life next week. An entire chapter of mine is quietly coming to an end with her.

I know there will be people who say, “She had a good, long life,” and they’re right. She did. But that doesn’t make saying goodbye easier. Gratitude and grief have never canceled each other out. In fact, I think the deeper the gratitude, the deeper the grief becomes. We don’t mourn because we were cheated. We mourn because we were blessed.

So next week, my heart will break a little more. It will be another goodbye to another beloved fur baby. It will stir up memories I haven’t visited in years. It will remind me of the husband who first placed this little dog into my life, and it will remind me how fortunate I have been to have another man willing to love her just as fiercely. Most of all, it will remind me that the greatest promise we make to our pets isn’t that we’ll keep them alive forever. It’s that we’ll protect them, even when protecting them means accepting heartbreak ourselves.

Joy has spent nearly sixteen years giving us everything she had. Next week, our final act of love will be giving her peace. And as impossible as that feels today, I hope that someday, when the ache isn’t quite so sharp, I’ll be able to look back and know that this wasn’t the day we stopped loving her. It was the day we loved her enough to let her go.

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

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

Finding A Home For The Things We Can’t Let Go Of….

There are pieces of furniture in our home that seem to spend years wandering. We move them from one room to another, tuck them into corners, try them against different walls… searching for the place where they finally feel like they belong. Sometimes it isn’t really about the furniture at all. Sometimes it’s about what it represents.

My grandmother’s sewing table has been one of those pieces for me.

After losing PawPaw, Fred, and Mom, the ache of loss made me hold tightly to the things that still felt connected to the people I loved. That little sewing table became more than wood and drawers and worn edges. It became proof that some things could still stay. Even when life changed in ways I never wanted it to.

My counselor often reminds me that the object isn’t the memory. The memory is the memory. And logically, I know she’s right. But grief is funny like that.

Sometimes we hold onto objects because they feel like anchors. Not because we believe the person lives inside the thing itself, but because touching it somehow quiets the fear that time will slowly erase what mattered. So I couldn’t let it go. Even when I wasn’t sure where it fit anymore. Even when it spent years being moved from one “maybe” spot to another.

I just had this feeling that if we kept trying, eventually we’d find its place. This weekend, we finally did.

Tim and I are in the middle of one of those deep purging phases where you start questioning every corner of your house and every item you’ve carried through different versions of your life. In the process, a wall in our living room unexpectedly opened up. One of those awkward spaces that had never really worked for anything before.

And somehow… it became exactly where the sewing table belonged.

Not only that, but it also gave purpose to a chair I’d been equally stubborn about refusing to part with. With a little rearranging of plants and shifting things around, the whole area suddenly came together into this quiet little nook that feels warm and lived in and meaningful.

Not staged. Not perfect. Just right. And I think that’s true for us sometimes too.

Some things — and some people — take longer to find where they belong after loss reshapes everything. We carry pieces of old lives into new ones and spend years trying to figure out where they fit now. Occasionally, when we least expect it, something shifts. A little space opens up. And suddenly what once felt misplaced feels at home again.

Not because the grief disappeared. But because life finally made room for both the memory and the living.

What things have had many spots in your home due to the memories they carry?

Blessings Y’all – Amy

The Unexpected Gift of a Month at Home

There’s something oddly comforting about looking at the calendar for the month of May and realizing… we’re home.

No airport alarms. No packing cubes spread across the bed. No checking cruise countdowns or figuring out what shoes fit best in a suitcase. No rushing around trying to get everything done before leaving town.

Just home. Time to sit in the garden and watch the sun go down.

And honestly, after seasons of busy schedules and constant motion, May feels a little like taking a deep breath.

A Different Kind of Excitement

At first glance, a month with no travel plans can almost feel uneventful — especially for those of us who always love having something on the calendar to look forward to. But the older I get, the more I realize there’s a different kind of excitement in staying put long enough to truly settle back into your own life for a while.

Because when I’m home for an entire month, things happen.

Projects move forward. Rooms get reorganized. Ideas finally have room to breathe. Creativity spreads out across the house in the best possible way. Quilts go to the quilter.

And maybe most importantly… I stop living in constant preparation mode.

The Productivity of Staying Still

Travel is wonderful, but let’s be honest — preparing for travel takes energy. Coming home from travel takes energy too.

When there’s nowhere to go for a while, I suddenly notice how much mental space opens back up. That’s usually when the creative ideas start showing up.

This month already feels like it’s going to be filled with stacks of fabric, open Canva tabs, quilts returning from the quilter, unfinished projects finally getting attention, and entirely too many ideas happening at once.

The sewing room will probably stay messy.
The dining room table may temporarily disappear under projects.
There will absolutely be late nights working on books, journals, coloring pages, and quilt plans while convincing myself I’m “almost done.”

And honestly?

I love that version of life too.

Home Is Where Real Life Happens

There’s something grounding about ordinary days when you slow down enough to appreciate them. Running errands without watching the clock. Watering plants in the evening. Working in the yard. Spending time with my in laws.

No rushing. Just life. And maybe that’s why this month feels so needed.

The Quiet Seasons Matter Too

I think sometimes we accidentally treat the “big” moments — vacations, holidays, celebrations, events — as the parts of life that matter most. But the older I get, the more I appreciate the quieter seasons in between. The months where nothing huge is happening. The weeks where you simply stay home long enough to reconnect with your routines, your creativity, your house, and yourself.

Because vacations create memories…but home is where life actually unfolds.

And this May?

May feels like breathing room. Like creativity. Like catching up on all the little things that make a house and a life feel comforting again.

And honestly, that sounds pretty wonderful to me.

Blessings y’all – Amy