memories – The Wandering Turtle

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

PawPaw’s Birthday

Today is my Pawpaw’s birthday.

Almost twelve years have passed since we lost him, and that number still surprises me. You’d think time would sand the edges down more than it has. It does soften some things—the sharpest ache, the shock of realizing he’s gone—but it never erases him. Not really. Not the way someone like Pawpaw could ever disappear.

There are days when I don’t think about him much at all, and then there are days like today when he feels right there. In the pauses. In the memories that show up uninvited. In the garden when the sun warms my face and it feels like one of his hugs. In the way I still catch myself wishing I could tell him something small and ordinary, just to hear what he’d say.

What I miss most isn’t one single moment or story. It’s the steadiness of him. The feeling that no matter what was going on in the world, Pawpaw was solid and safe and exactly who he’d always been. He didn’t need to be loud to be influential. He didn’t need to say much to say enough. Just being Pawpaw was more than sufficient.

Grief this far out looks different than it used to. It’s quieter. It doesn’t knock the wind out of me the way it once did. But it’s persistent in a gentle way, like a low hum that never fully goes silent. I miss him when something good happens. I miss him when life feels heavy. I miss him when my roses bloom and remind me of him. I miss him when I laugh at something and think, he would’ve loved that.

Birthdays have a way of doing that—of reopening doors you didn’t realize were still unlocked. Today isn’t sad exactly, but it’s tender. It’s a reminder that love doesn’t expire just because someone does. Almost twelve years later, Pawpaw is still part of who I am, still woven into my life in ways time can’t undo.

Happy birthday, Pawpaw. You are still missed. Still loved. Always remembered.

Blessings y’all – Amy

What’s Changed in 19 Years…

Today would have been my 19th wedding anniversary with Fred.

That sentence still lands with weight.

Not because I am stuck there. Not because I want to go back. But because love leaves fingerprints on time, and some dates never become neutral again.

Nineteen years ago, I married a man who shaped me. We built a life in the way couples do—messy, hopeful, unfinished. We grew up together. We learned who we were by learning how to be married. And when he died, that chapter didn’t close neatly. It ended mid-sentence.

Grief doesn’t respect calendars, but anniversaries have a way of knocking anyway.

What anchors me on days like today is gratitude.

Because the love we shared didn’t disappear with him. It lives on in the children he shared with me, in the family we built together, in the relationships and roots that still surround my life. I am profoundly grateful for that legacy. For the laughter that still sounds like him. For the people who carry pieces of him forward without even realizing it. For the fact I can still see his smile in our children’s. He didn’t just leave me memories—he left me a family.

And here’s the part that still feels strange to say out loud: I am deeply, fully, undeniably in love with Tim.

Not instead of loving my Fred.

Not in competition with that love.

Just… also.

For a long time, I thought love worked like a single chair—you vacate it, or you sit in it. One at a time. I didn’t understand that love is more like a house. Rooms get added. Some doors stay closed most days, but they’re still there.

Today is one of those days when an old door creaks open.

I can miss the man I lost and still laugh with the man I married.

I can honor a marriage that ended in death and still be fiercely committed to the one I’m in now.

I can feel the ache of “what would have been” without wishing away what is.

Loving my Tim does not erase my past. And remembering my Fred does not diminish my present.

That’s the juxtaposition people don’t talk about enough—the quiet coexistence.

Tim didn’t replace Fred. He met me after loss reshaped me. He loves a woman who knows how fragile life is, how precious ordinary days are, how deeply commitment can root itself in the bones. He loves me with patience on days like today, when the calendar carries more emotional weight than usual. And that love is not smaller because it came later. If anything, it is more intentional.

Grief taught me that love is not scarce. It expands. It stretches. It surprises you.

So today, I hold both truths.

I remember the man I married nineteen years ago, with gratitude—for our life, for our children, for the family he left behind that still carries me forward.

And I choose the man I wake up next to now, with joy, loyalty, and a full heart.

Both can be true.

Both are true.

And that doesn’t make love complicated.

It makes it real.

Blessings y’all – Amy

Another Goodbye, A Closing, and A New Year

This one has been bouncing around in my brain the last few weeks and I’ve been trying to sort through so many emotions. Figure I’ll sort it out here like I always do lol. The Irving house finally found its new owners. About a week ago another tumor took our sweet Paris. And inexplicably a new year is upon us.

We signed the papers on the Irving house four years to the day of when I unpacked the last box, hung the last picture, and posted the before and after video of the renovation from moving into Turtle Summit. Funny sometimes how God’s timing works. I’ve been trying to put my mind around the emotions there, cause there are some, but can’t quite get there. When I reflect back on who I was then…man.

Four years ago I was so angry. So tired. So overwhelmed. So afraid. If I dared to crack open one of my prayer journals I can almost promise you those prayers read something like “give me my life back” or “rewind the clock”. My children were leaving home, my husband was gone, and I had absolutely no idea who I was. And quite frankly I was crazy. Out of my mind flipping crazy. I look back on that person and wonder where she came from and thank God every day that he put the right tools and people in my path to get me through.

As I look around today? My list of blessings is as overwhelming as that list of pain and sorrow was. A home I never could have dreamed this small town girl would ever have. A man I adore who loves me beyond measure. A job that challenges me and pushes me to keep growing even when I’d like a minute to breathe.

Last weekend we said goodbye to another of our fur babies. She was older but we weren’t ready. She had a tumor in her ear that they couldn’t promise us wasn’t in her brain. She was in pain and not herself. We kept the promise we made each other not to prolong our babies lives for our own inability to say goodbye. But less than three months after losing Hope it just made the grief hole rip open again. The energy in the house has shifted again and the three remaining girls are tying to find a new rhythm. They are very clingy to us and hate when we leave the house.

Tim and I’s word for 2025 is “intentional”. So often we find ourselves at the end of a week, month, or year having just responded to all that came at us instead of acting intentionally towards our goals. We want to work on the goals we have set and live life on our terms. I think some of that is a result of seeing what we accomplished when we set our mind to it with the house. Not sure. We just know that as we heal from some of what 2024 took from us and embrace some of what it gave us we have big plans.

I am waking up at night with my mind and my heart racing. Anxiety coursing through me that I can’t identify. I thought it was the house. But with that settled not sure what it is. Work is out of control busy so maybe it’s that. But I know that if I turn it over to God and just lift it in prayer it’ll resolve itself in time. Just takes the one thing hardest for me – faith.

What are you reflecting on in as we close out 2024?

—Amy

Reflections on a Holiday Season

Another Christmas Eve is here. As I sit and reflect on how this year’s holiday season has gone I realize progress was made this year. For the first time in years Christmas wasn’t something just to be survived and gotten through!

I’ve spent numerous of the years past turning myself inside out trying to survive the holidays. That or exhausting myself alternating between trying to avoid them wishing away pain and memories or trying to make them perfect. Somehow this year in just letting go it was actually a very enjoyable season.

Did I get Christmas cards out this year? Nope. Get everything on the list of things I wanted to get for people I love? Not even close. Did I find a new favorite Christmas album that I wore out every commute back and forth to work for a month? Yep. (Thank you Cher.) Bake cookies and treats until I was exhausted but happy? Yep.

Tomorrow we are shucking the traditional Christmas menu and replacing it with tamales (brought in through contacts at work) and easy sides. No 5 am turkey shenanigans for me. Short of jumping on a ship I don’t remember another year we’ve dropped traditional Christmas dinner. What’s more? Everyone is pretty darn excited about it!

2024 was a year of huge changes. If you had asked me at this time last year if I’d be living anywhere other than Irving where I’d spent the last 20 years I’d have told you that you were smoking something. But if this year has taught me anything it’s that unlike what life has shown me the last decade or so change can also be good. So I guess it shouldn’t really surprise me that Christmas this year would be different! 🎄

Merry Christmas y’all!

Amy

Another Goodbye is Upon Us

Someone said to me today that pre-grieving is as hard as the grieving can be. While I had never heard the phrase “pre-grieving” it certainly fit. Knowing what’s coming, agonizing on if you are making the right decision, if the time is right, knowing how much it’s going to hurt…it all sucks.

The time has come that we have to say goodbye to Hope. Tomorrow we’ll take her to the vet and send her home to God where she won’t be in pain anymore. While I know she has quite the host of angels waiting to receive her my heart is still breaking.

Hope is the youngest of our babies. If I really dwell on the unfairness of it all that’s the thing that hits me the most. We have three senior citizen dogs and our youngest girl got aggressive non-treatable cancer. Like WTF.

From the day we got her Hope’s role has fit her name. She gave us hope. She came into our life to fill the hole left when we lost Tigre. The kids wouldn’t let me name her Faith or Love from 1 Corinthians 13:13: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” So I named her Hope.

She has always had human tendencies. She has never been one for just a belly rub. She has to hug you. Both arms around your neck hug you before she is content. She sits up in “her” chair on her butt like a human. She has never ever realized her own size…she’ll crawl into your lap like she is a five pound chihuahua instead of an eighty pound overgrown love mutt. She’ll sneak under the covers in bed with you at night and curl up oh so tight only to run you off the bed spread across half of it in the middle of the night – running in her sleep no less.

I read something recently speculating on what a dogs’ purpose is on this earth. It is to remind us humans that love is supposed to be easy. Unconditional, all consuming, and with the unadulterated joy that comes to a dog when we walk through the door. It’s us humans that make it hard. Dogs like Hope are especially good at their job. All she ever needed was a piece of human food snuck under the table (cherry tomatoes are her favorite!), a hug, a lap to sleep in, or a car ride with her ears flapping and her tongue wagging. Or to wrestle with her sister over who got to get to me first when I walked in the door.

So how do you say goodbye? How do you look into those big brown eyes and tell her it’s ok to let go? That you’ll be ok even when at that moment you aren’t sure you will be? That’s how I will love her the way she has always loved me. Selflessly and deeply. I don’t want her to hurt anymore. I want her to run and roll and play and feel no pain. My heart will carry her with me for the rest of my days. I’ll console her sisters for many many weeks to come – especially Lilah. I’ll bury my face in her blanket and seek comfort from her smell until it fades.

I believe in heaven and I believe with all my heart that the angels who sent her to heal my broken heart after Tigre left us are making ready her place with them. I believe she’ll be free of pain. I am deeply grateful that God made the pieces fall in place on our move to allow her final days to be spent someplace where she had a yard to run and play in and be a dog instead of the way she’s had to live the last four years in the backyard at the other house. I’m grateful for these last core memories of her. More than I can even put into words.

So I’ll sign off now and soak up these last hours of Hope snuggles. Thanks for indulging my rambling. And go grab and extra hug from your own babies for me. Life is precious and it goes too damn fast.

Blessings – Amy

Put Your Life In Boxes

Wanna know where you fall in the pack rat/hoarder scale in life? Pack your house. Clean out every nook. Every cranny. Attic. Shed. Garage. Put it in boxes. You’ll find that “I should hang onto this for _____” thing that we all do? Goes away real fast. Pretty sure my trash man hates me. Also pretty sure my kids are tired of the text “do you want this”. I’ve lost count of the number of trash bags, boxes, rolls of tape, markers, lists, copies of floor plans, ideas, room shuffles, crying sessions, sleepless nights, etc etc etc. Moving ain’t for the faint of heart.

But on the flip side? When you get just about to the finish line. When your list of things to go through shrinks down to just a couple of things left the sense of peace that starts to come allows air in places inside you that haven’t seen light in a long time. Yesterday we finally got the attic emptied. I slept seven hours in a row last night. Seven hard almost dreamless hours. The two are definitely connected. From the attic I opened boxes with memories that made me smile, some that made me want to weep, and some that just reminded me of treasured times in my life. Pulled out items that made my daughter laugh and some that reminded me of just how small she used to be.

What they don’t tell us when we are in our 20’s and 30’s is that there will come a time in our life when the kids will move on and all we will have left of them is those tiny shirts and treasured pictures. For the generations coming behind us less and less of those printed pictures because so much is digital (which after cleaning out an attic recently might not be entirely a bad thing). My counselor tells me all the time the memories aren’t in the “stuff” but man there were memories that came to the surface last night that I couldn’t have willingly recalled without sticking my nose in a shirt collar or thumbing through an album. There has to be a balance somewhere between having hundreds of boxes and expecting our tired aging brains to recall it all. Don’t you think?

Early in Tim and I’s relationship we just sort of accepted that we wouldn’t move for at least a decade. I remember phrases like “too much work with 6 dogs” and “too many people need us here”. We laid there last night and talked about where we are in this journey. The excitement we both feel each time we walk in the new house. The very foreign concept for me of doing this thing that is for us first and everyone else second. The fact that I haven’t lived outside of Irving in over 20 years. The negative emotions have been forefront for several weeks keeping me from really enjoying this process. When I say I married the greatest man ever I ain’t joking. The way he has put up with the roller coaster I have been on and still just loved me through it? No words. If anything we’ve grown stronger in who we are together. Pretty heady stuff.

I realize now that while I thought Turtle Summit was the peak of my mountain (and why I named it Summit) it was only the mid-line. God never intends us to stop growing. We’re almost through the hardest part of the work and I’m freaking excited. I’ve got a blank slate of a house to make my own. My dogs will have a yard they can run and play in. I’ll be part of watching a neighborhood fill in around me. I’ll be pushed outside of my box and my routine and have to learn new things. I won’t be able to run on autopilot for the last half of my life. I’m just not done living. Why I thought I was I have no idea.

So pack your life up. Even if it’s one closet at a time. Purge. Organize. There is an intangible that comes with that that kick-starts your soul and reminds you there is more to life than the day to day of surviving. God intends us to do more than just survive. I just need to have that tattooed on my damn forehead some days apparently.

Blessings ya’ll – Amy

The Circle of Life

I can remember being in my late teens and early 20’s when 40 was “old”. I can remember being young enough to not recognize maturity and wisdom when it was handed to me as my elders tried to prevent me from repeating the past. I can remember being young enough to be fearless of the choices I was making (though never as adventurous as I wanted to be). That fearlessness is what makes us leap to be parents. To fall in love, to buy a home, to move cross country, or to choose a career off the beaten path.

Then we hit empty nest season. Most of the time that season starts in our 40’s. Now as we have free time we have the maturity and wisdom to know things we aren’t blessed with knowing in our 20’s (nor willing to listen to). Moving makes us think twice, three times, and then decide we don’t have the desire to start over. This is the time of life we start losing celebrities we grew up on or people close to us that have always been there like parents or grandparents.

Things start to hurt, ache, our bodies become a stumbling block rather than an aid. Our minds are still sharp, we want to DO something with this time of life, but aren’t always able to reconcile mind with body. Now is the time we get what I call the “birds eye view” of the circle of life. We begin to face the inevitability that our children will have to carry on someday without us the same as we learned to live with the hole in our heart left when our elders left us.

We begin to learn how precious time is. Things that incited us in our 20-30’s no longer seem worth the energy of getting mad. We tend to hold onto things that bring us fond memories and nostalgia is our constant friend. We begin to call our kids’ music “noise” and miss the days we could understand the lyrics in a song and not get a headache from listening to the radio. We also realize we aren’t invincible. Bones break. Muscles ache. We forget things. We choose comfort over beauty. We start to look forward to retirement more than going to work and dealing with the grind everyday.

I am convinced that if we had the wisdom in our 20’s-30’s that the latter half of life brings us the world would be a different place. Less anger. More appreciation for each other and our paths. Maybe that is just fanciful thinking of an aging woman.

I first heard the phrase “Circle of Life” in the Lion King (didn’t most of us?). Not sure I ever really appreciated what it meant until I got to this phase of life. Would I change any part of my 20’s & 30’s? Absolutely not. I learned how to love, I grew up, I raised a family. Those years were hard – harder than they probably should have been – but those years gave me a deep appreciation for love and family. Those days make me treasure moments with my children and never take my husband for granted.

Someday my kids will be 45. Hopefully I’ll still be here and not an ache in their heart the way my grandparents are in mine. Hopefully they’ll be as blessed as I was with them and as full of memories as I am. More than anything I want that for them. And that, my friends, is what I think the true circle of life is. ❤️

Blessings Y’all – Amy

What’s In A Name?

When Tim and I got engaged one of the first questions I was asked over and over was if I was going to change my name. My immediate answer was “yes”. I’m an old school southern girl….why was that a question? I was a little stumped but too busy to analyze. I couldn’t do anything about it anyway until after my Thanksgiving trip so I shelved it though it never left my tumultuous overthinking brain.

Lanford has been my identity for more of my adult life than not. It’s the name my kids have (by birth or by a Fred declaration). It represents my years as a young woman learning to be a wife and a mom. It represents a chapter that I may have turned the page but it as much a part of who I am as green eyes or brown hair. There are so many reasons I love Tim but perhaps the most special reason is the room he makes in our life for my kids and Fred. His point of view is he knows he wouldn’t have me if the kids and I hadn’t lost Fred so he respects and makes space of that part of our life. He spends time with the kids and participates in traditions that pre-date him by a decade. I’m telling you I don’t deserve this man…

As Bev and I prepared for this years Turkey trip I started pulling together a list of what was involved in becoming Mrs. Davis. Holy cow Batman. Passport. Global Entry. Social Security. Drivers License. Credit cards, bank accounts, investment accounts, utilities, mortgages, etc etc etc. The list is freaking endless. Turns out it is a hell of a lot harder to change your name as a 40 something established woman than a girl in her 20’s starting her life.

The task is paralyzing. Suddenly I understood why woman far wiser than I am had asked the question to begin with. Add to that that it makes absolutely no difference to Tim if I change it or not (he says he’s got the girl and that’s what matters) and I began to question my sanity at embarking down this road. I had a lot of time to think this week. To seek counsel from Tim’s mom and Bev. To really try and wrap my mind and heart around what to do.

I’ve been wrestling with what I was taught and all these other factors. There is a part of me that can freely admit I am overwhelmed at the task with all the other things going on at work and know it’ll just be “easier’ to keep Lanford. There is a place in my heart that doesn’t want to give up Lanford because it’s my connection to my kids and niece (yes I know they will still love me as Davis.) I can’t talk about that connection to the kids without crying. I can’t find peace in my heart with either decision. Turns out there is a quite a lot to a name.

My sweet husband did the research and there is no time limit on changing it. I can sit with it until I’m sure either way or until life slows down. For now, I’ll continue to pray, seek counsel, and wait on peace to come either way. I trust that God knows who I am regardless of my name and will give me clarity when it’s time.

Blessings y’all – Amy