This second trimester has unfolded beneath the heat of a muggy and tiring Virginia summer.

The garden has slowed beneath the relentless sun, the afternoons have become heavy and still, and my own body has begged me to do the same. This pregnancy has been so much harder physically than my first. Growing a baby while chasing a toddler has left very little room for the illusion that I can do it all. Instead, this season has taught me to live within my capacity.

Some days, success has looked remarkably ordinary: enough sleep, enough nourishing food, enough water, a load of laundry folded, dishes washed, and my son tucked into bed after another day of discovering the world.

There is a quiet holiness in ordinary faithfulness.

As this baby continues to grow, I find myself filled with genuine excitement. I wonder who this little person will become. I imagine introducing our newborn to their older brother, watching another little personality emerge, and witnessing our family stretch to make room for one more soul entrusted to us.

Lately I’ve found myself thinking often about what it will mean to become a mother of two.

Intellectually, I know countless women have crossed this bridge before me. Mothers have welcomed multiple babies for as long as there have been mothers. But standing on the edge of a new experience is strange. I can understand it without yet being able to imagine myself inside it.

How do you divide yourself between two little people who need you in completely different ways?

The answer, I’m sure, is simply that mothers just do.

I’m not afraid. I’m not even anxious. It just feels wonderfully unknown.

But thinking about welcoming another child has made me realize something I never thought deeply about before the hardest day of my life in November 2023.

One of the greatest gifts we can ever give our children is each other.

I have loved many people in my life, but there is something altogether unique about loving your siblings. No one else—not even your spouse—knows the landscape of your childhood the way your brothers and sisters do. They remember the same kitchen, the same Christmas mornings, the same parents, the same inside jokes no one else understands.

Siblings become witnesses to your life.

I have two brothers, and I love them more deeply than I know how to describe.

Losing one of them has only made that truth more obvious.

There are moments when I watch my son discover something new and instinctively think of my heavenly brother. I wonder what he would have laughed at. I wonder what stories he would have told. I wonder how often he would have been able to visit our kids.

What hurts most is knowing he would have loved this. Really loved it.

Before he died, he had already become an uncle to my older brother’s children, and he embraced that role wholeheartedly. He was still young, only 21, but he understood that family mattered. He showed up. He played with them. He loved them well.

I have no doubt he would have loved my little ones just as fiercely.

Instead, my son only knows his Uncle Z through the photographs hanging on our walls. We point to his face often enough that he recognizes him immediately. Earlier this year, on my brother’s birthday, my son learned to say “Happy Birthday” for the very first time. He still says “Happy Birthday” sometimes when we look at pictures of his Uncle Z, as if every day is a celebration for him, which I believe in some ways it is.

It felt like such a small thing at first, and yet it has become one of those moments I often reflect on, reminding me that heaven doesn’t seem nearly as far away as we often imagine.

I don’t believe love ends at the grave.

I believe it is one of the few things death cannot touch.

We continue to love those who have gone before us, and I trust that somehow, in the mystery of God’s eternity, they are not separated from that love either. I believe my brother still loves us. I believe he delights in these children even though they cannot yet know him the way I wish they could.

Our love reaches toward heaven, and somehow, by the grace of God, heaven’s love reaches back.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest comforts of the Christian life. Christ has transformed death from an ending into a promise. I can miss my brother without believing he is gone forever.

Which is why, when I picture this new baby, I don’t only imagine another child to love.

I imagine my son receiving one of life’s greatest gifts.

A sibling.

Someone who, God willing, will walk beside him long after his father and I are gone.

Maybe that’s why this summer has felt so meaningful when I really reflect on the ups and downs of it all.

One of the unexpected joys of these past two months has been something we called Friday Fun Days. Every Friday throughout June and July I invited a group of local mothers and their children to come spend the morning at our house. No agenda. No elaborate activities. Just an open invitation to gather.

This idea came from something I’ve noticed about modern motherhood. We’re all happy to meet at the library, the park, the beach, or the playground. Many families spend several days each week loading everyone into the car and heading somewhere. Yet very few of us seem to invite one another into our homes.

For a while I found that a little strange because it’s not how I was raised. In my home, we always hosted friends, and most playdates happened at my friends’ homes or in our own. So I’ve wondered if perhaps I simply wasn’t close enough with my mom friends yet, or if everyone’s homes were perpetually “not ready.”

Eventually I realized it didn’t really matter why. Rather than wondering why no one was hosting, I decided I simply would. Our house is small. We still eat every meal around a folding plastic table. We don’t own a couch yet. There are always projects waiting to be finished and rooms I’d like to organize better. But I love this home.

And I’ve come to believe that hospitality has very little to do with perfection. Looking back, Friday Fun Days weren’t wildly successful by most people’s standards. Out of eight or nine Fridays, there were several mornings when no one came. And it was okay.

Some weeks it was one friend and her children. Only once did everything line up just right and three families arrived around the same time. Suddenly there were eleven children running across our backyard acre, splashing in the kiddie pool, crowding around the water table, inventing games in the open field, while their mothers sat beneath the umbrella talking together.

The entire backyard took maybe twenty minutes to prepare.

A kiddie pool.

A water table.

A few chairs.

Some snacks.

It never felt difficult.

The harder lesson was learning not to measure hospitality by attendance. Children get sick. Families visit grandparents. Weekend trips happen. Sometimes another invitation simply fits the day better. None of those things are personal. So I decided my job wasn’t to fill the backyard. My job was simply to hold the space.

Week after week, whether anyone came or not, I was exercising muscles that had grown weak over the years. The muscles of hospitality. The muscles of reaching out first. The muscles of opening my home without expecting anything in return.

When I sent a message at the end of July letting everyone know it would be my last officially hosted Friday for the summer, the responses surprised me. Every single one was warm and grateful, even from those friends who never made it. Some mothers had only come once. Others had come nearly every week. But all of them expressed how much they appreciated knowing there was always somewhere to gather if they needed it.

It made me wonder if many of us are quietly waiting for someone else to go first. Maybe they wish they could host too, but their homes feel too unfinished, too cluttered, too small. Maybe they believe hospitality belongs to people with beautiful dining rooms and matching furniture.

I hope our little folding table offered another possibility. Hospitality isn’t about presenting your life after you’ve finally gotten everything together. It’s about inviting people into your real life while it’s still being lived.

One of the sweetest surprises came a few weeks into the summer when I was invited to join a Bible study with many of these same mothers. Before long, I had signed up for another study that will continue through the fall. The friendships themselves are different now. There’s a new depth and trust. Less like acquaintances arranging playdates and more like women walking beside one another through the beautiful, exhausting work of raising young children.

Looking back, I don’t think this summer was really about pregnancy, or gardening, or Friday Fun Days. It has been about relationships. It was about making room for the people God has entrusted to me. Making room in my body for another child. Making room in my son’s life for a sibling. Making room in my home for friendship. Making room in my heart for both joy and grief.

All of this has left me thinking about what remains after our lives are over. It isn’t the condition of our homes. It isn’t how productive we were. It isn’t whether every project was finished. What remains are the people we loved. The children we raised. The friendships we nurtured. The brothers and sisters who shaped us. The faith that carried us. These are the relationships that carry weight in eternity.

My brother’s life reminds me of that every day. His years were far fewer than any of us wanted, but the love he gave continues to bear fruit long after his death. I still carry it. My family still carries it. Even my son, who knows him only through photographs, is growing up inside that love.

Perhaps that’s what a home is really for. Not simply to shelter the people inside it, but to cultivate the kind of love that outlives us.

As I step into the final months of this pregnancy, I don’t know exactly what life with two children will look like. I can’t quite picture myself inside it yet. But I know this: love has never been divided. It has only ever multiplied.

And that gives me every reason to look toward this next season with hope.

It has been a little while since I’ve written here, and for good reason. We have some very happy news to share; baby number two is on the way! Our newest little one is due in late November, and we could not be more grateful that God has heard our prayers.

Looking back now, it’s quite funny how we found out. I now know that I became pregnant in early February, but because we had been traveling in February and then my husband and son had both been sick through March, I assumed I was simply the third domino to fall. I felt awful for nearly two weeks. Every morning I expected to wake up feeling a little better, and every morning I didn’t. Finally, on Easter morning (April 5th), Derek suggested I should take a pregnancy test just to rule out the potential that I might be pregnant. I decided he was right and went off into the bathroom to take the test before resigning myself to another day of whatever mysterious illness I thought I had. To our delight two bright pink lines appeared almost immediately. Instead of the flu, I was about six weeks pregnant.

This second pregnancy has already been a very different teacher than the first. The first time, everything was new. I had never experienced that kind of exhaustion before, and I could simply rest when I needed to because there wasn’t another little person depending on me every hour of the day.

This time, there is a toddler to watch over, meals to prepare, laundry to wash, dishes to put away, a garden trying its best to grow outside, and a home that still asks for attention even when my body has very little left to give. I struggled so much through the first trimester. The nausea was relentless, and the exhaustion was unlike anything I remembered. I would sometimes look at mothers with four, six, or even eight children and honestly wonder how they survived those early weeks over and over again. I still don’t know the answer. I only know how I survived mine: with the Grace of God & a great husband.

Part of what made this season especially difficult was realizing that something needed to change in how I was caring for my body. I was still nursing my son on demand throughout the day, just as we always had, but layering that level of physical demand on top of early pregnancy quickly became unsustainable. I was barely able to nourish myself. Some days I would eat half a box of mac and cheese in tiny bites spread across the entire day, simply because it was all I could manage. Over those first two to three months, I actually lost nearly ten pounds.

Coming to terms with the need to begin weaning was deeply emotional for both of us. Nursing had been such a constant source of comfort and connection, and letting go of that rhythm felt like closing a chapter I wasn’t quite ready to end. But as my nausea slowly began to fade, I knew I needed to take my nutrition more seriously—for my own health, for this new baby, and ultimately for my ability to continue caring for my son well.

Several weeks later, we have found a new rhythm that feels both gentle and sustainable. We now nurse together first thing in the morning, wrapped up in sleepy cuddles, and again in the evening before bedtime. It still honors his need for connection while respecting my body’s capacity. I’ve gained that weight back and have been eating much more nourishing foods that I feel proud to put into my body—though every now and then, a box of mac and cheese still calls my name.

Balance, after all.

Through that first trimester my husband really carried us through. He woke up with our toddler every morning so I could sleep in just another hour or two. He cooked nearly every meal while I lived off tiny bites of food and reheated leftovers. He made sure our son was fed, made sure he himself was fed, and kept our home running while I mostly just tried to make it through each day. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. I am so immensely grateful for everything he pours into our family, especially when I have so little to give in seasons like this one.

By the second trimester I finally began to feel like myself again, and for a few precious weeks, life felt almost normal. Then this past week happened.

What started as overwhelming dizziness quickly became frightening. I was so faint I could barely stand without help, and my husband took me to the emergency room. They tested everything they could think to test, and everything came back beautifully normal. Most importantly baby #2 was totally safe. A few days later I woke up with a sore throat, and it ended up being just a common cold. Apparently my pregnant body simply decided to respond to an ordinary virus with extraordinary drama. Nearly a week later, I finally feel like I’m approaching solid ground again.

Now I’m looking around our home and realizing this season is one of catching up—not because we’ve been lazy, but simply because so much life has happened over these past 18 weeks. There’s a Murphy bed my mom generously gave us for my birthday back in March, still sitting in enormous cardboard boxes beneath the living room window because we haven’t had a free afternoon to assemble it. Similarly, two un-built IKEA nightstands have lived in the corner of our bedroom since we moved into this house last July. The office still functions mostly as a place where anything not toddler-safe gets carried and dropped behind the baby gate.

There are closets I want to simplify. I’d like to cut my wardrobe in half especially as my body changes again. I also know that nearly half of my husband’s clothes don’t even fit this season of our lives anymore. He’s just not wearing button downs and suits to the office as a WFH homesteading husband. By this point in late June winter coats should really be packed away in the attic until next season. I know exactly what needs to be done. The funny thing is, organizing is one of my favorite hobbies. The desire is there, but the energy often isn’t. With a toddler and pregnancy sharing the same season, even small organizational projects can feel like climbing a mountain.

And yet, our home works well enough. The kitchen serves us beautifully every single day. Our laundry nook isn’t perfect, but it functions. Our bedroom is genuinely cozy once the clean laundry finds its way into the dresser. My son’s nursery is one of my favorite rooms in the house—his toys have homes, his bookshelf is filling with stories we’ll read for years, and there are fingerprints of love and intention everywhere I look.

I think that’s what homemaking actually is. Not perfectly styled shelves or decorated walls, not a house where every project is finished, not closets that stay organized forever. Maybe homemaking is simply the long, faithful work of making a place more peaceful little by little—sorting a closet this month, building furniture next month, finding better systems next year, learning how your family actually lives instead of how you imagined they would.

As a young pregnant homemaker I’m learning that creating a home isn’t a project we finish; it’s a lifelong practice. And maybe this season isn’t one where I need to accomplish more. Maybe it’s simply one where I learn to accept my current capacity with gratitude instead of frustration.

For now, that feels like a good enough goal.

I would love to hear from you! Share your thoughts in our chat below.

The transition from winter to springtime is my favorite shift of all the seasons. The lengthening of days. The slow transition from brown to green. And most importantly, the first warm day with no coat and sunshine on my face. Derek and I often joke that I am solar powered—the way the sun radiates through my existence and improves my mood is unlike anything else.

But this year, that transition feels earned like never before.

This past winter was full of chaos. I made an intentional effort to try to befriend my enemy. The Cold. We have had irreconcilable differences my entire life. As long as I can remember being a frozen elementary school kid, miserably sitting on the curb outside during recess, waiting for the teachers to finally let me go back inside. But Christmas has always been the joyful respite in the dark misery that the cold seeps into my bones. As I thought about it, I realized that I didn’t want to be an example of misery for my son every time this cold dark season came back.

So this year, I invited my enemy into my open heart. I made significant efforts to amend our broken relationship. I bought wool clothing and layers that actually fit. I leaned into warm drinks and crock pots full of soups. Most importantly, I tried to change my heart posture whenever I needed to suit up and face the door to the outside world. I wanted so show my son that winter has beauty too.

And in some ways, I was able to enjoy the season more because of my efforts to be more prepared and open minded.

But winter had more to teach me than I expected.

During this winter, we aimed to slow down and regroup. 2025 was full of beautiful, meaningful chaos. But chaos all the same. Raising our first child and experiencing all of the constant shifts that happen in the first year of life left me with no schedule, no discipline, and very little predictability. I did my best to be present in each season and to truly enjoy every gift that my amazing baby had to offer. We nursed on demand, shared a room together for nine months, and I carried him around in various carriers like a baby kangaroo (and sometimes still do).

It was beautiful. And it was unsustainable.

And that chaos didn’t begin with winter. It had been building for months.

A quick recap for new readers: this was our first winter as a married couple.

In early November, Derek and I stood together and made vows after ten years of growing together. We had only decided 2 months before that we finally wanted to make the event happen with our parents and close family. Our son just turned one a month before the wedding. It was everything I hoped it would be, small, full of joy, full of meaning, full of beauty. My memories of that perfect day will linger in my memory like a warm light for the rest of my life.

But I see now in retrospect how much it asked of us.

Planning a last minute wedding (even a small one) with a one-year-old, without much help nearby, meant constantly dividing myself—between motherhood and logistics, between presence and planning. I was holding something sacred in both hands, but I didn’t always have the strength to hold them well at the same time.

And I think, quietly, without naming it, I slipped into survival mode. In the days before the wedding, I was only sleeping about four hours each night while my son still woke every 3-4 hours to nurse, and it took time to recover from that way of living. Expectations had to be reset for our household, both as parents and as newlyweds.

Just as we were finally beginning to settle into married life, winter arrived in full force.

By mid-December, I came down with the flu for the first time in my life. I realized it’s not the kind of sickness you can push through, but the kind that humbles you, that slows you all the way down whether you’re ready or not.

And just as I began to recover, Christmas Eve came and with it my son’s first real illness as the flu passed to him too.

I can still feel that night.

The heat of his skin radiating out.
The way the house felt dim and full of chaos.
The rhythm of four-hour intervals—medicine, temperature checks, puking and cleaning on repeat, damp cloths, whispered prayers in the quiet.

There was no Christmas in the way I had imagined it. No gifts under the half-decorated tree. No cards sent to loved ones. No cookies and milk set out. Every tradition I loved was set aside for our immediate needs.

Just care.
Just presence.
Just love in its most stripped-down form.

As my son improved, my husband caught the bug and went down. We passed the illness between us like a baton—me, then him, then Derek. Nearly four weeks of existing in a parallel world where life didn’t move forward, only sideways.

It was the first time I realized how paralyzing illness can be for a family household. Although I had personally recovered, I was still living in “sick mode,” care taking for my boys, and it was all-consuming.

This is the hidden work of mothering and being a wife—the kind that doesn’t look beautiful from the outside, but matters most. When everything is in survival mode, and you still place your whole heart outside of your body every single day—in the loving caresses, the refilled water bottles, the cups of warm soup, nursing for an extra few minutes each hour.

What followed wasn’t a quick return to normal, but a slow unraveling.

I realized we weren’t living fully. We were maintaining bare minimum.

And when we finally came up for air after the sickness passed, we realized something uncomfortable—

We hadn’t just been sick.

We had been scattered.

Even before the sickness, our life had begun to spread itself thin.

We had traveled often last year—making several flights to Georgia, bringing my son into the arms of my family, letting him be known and loved by the people who shaped me. Those trips were a gift, but so is this place.

This home.
This land.
This homestead we had prayed for and finally stepped into.

And if I’m honest, it had been waiting for us. We hadn’t really begun building yet. We had only just arrived. So there was a conversation Derek and I kept returning to in quiet, ordinary moments this winter.

At the sink.
In bed late after bedtime.
Looking out over land that still felt more like a blank canvas than a reality.

What are we building here? And slowly, gently, the answer came: We need to stay.

2026, for us, is a year of rootedness.

Not because we don’t love our family. Not because we don’t want to go and see them at every available opportunity. But because you cannot grow roots if you are always in motion. And with that intention in our hearts—and our bodies recovered, and the house reset—we decided to make one more trip.

In February, we packed the car and drove ten hours to Georgia. Our first real road trip with Carter. Everything about that trip felt intentional.

Slower.
Softer.
More aware.

We didn’t try to do everything. We just were together. Georgia still feels like home to me. But it is no longer my home.

I felt so much nostalgia as we took my son one morning to a park near my parents’ home where I had once played as a little girl. The slides were the same. The monkey bars and the little rock wall too. My son bravely learned to climb the steps on his own. He learned to slide down the little slide on his tummy, giggling like the sensation of gravity was the greatest comedian he had ever known.

It made me think of my mother all those years ago, bringing us there and walking laps around that very park. Was she just as happy as I was to get out of the house? Was she also trying to make friends with the other parents sitting on those same benches? My mother is my biggest blessing in this life, and sitting on that park bench in my hometown, I felt something come full circle. Although my home is now with my family on our homestead, my birthplace will always be part of me.

When we came back to the homestead, something in me felt settled. I had embraced the lessons winter had to teach me. And then, almost quietly, the season began to turn.

If winter was chaos—even beautiful chaos—then early spring became something else entirely.

Order.

Not perfect. Not rigid. But intentional. And this is where everything began to change. I thought motherhood meant surrendering to the chaos. I’m learning now it also means gently shaping it.

We had been doing all the standard crunchy things—co-sleeping, nursing on demand, letting the days unfold however they would. But over time, that rhythm turned into unpredictability and exhaustion. It became nights that stretched endlessly, with over an hour of nursing, my body aching, my patience thinning, my spirit worn down.

Something had to change.

So, slowly, we introduced discipline. Not harshness. Not rigidity. But structure. I began putting him down at the same time each night. I created a rhythm his body could learn. And within just a couple of weeks, everything began to change. He started sleeping through the night. Eight hours. For the first time in nearly a year and a half, I slept too.

And what I didn’t expect was this: I didn’t feel like I had lost something. I felt like I had gained something.

Peace.

Discipline has a reputation for being restrictive. But I’ve come to see it as something else entirely. Discipline is a form of love. We didn’t move from chaos to perfection. We moved from chaos to order. From reaction to intention. From survival to cultivation.

Spring doesn’t erase winter. But it does redeem it. And for the first time in a long time, I feel it—Peace, finally, has somewhere to land here on the homestead and in my heart.

2025 has been a crazy, beautiful, stressful, hectic year, and one I am deeply grateful for. It has been a year of growth and lots of travel, resilience and life lessons. A year of being pulled in many directions at once. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to stand on my own two feet with my heart in alignment with my head. And in doing so, I truly became a mother.

The year began in January with a journey back to my home state of Georgia, where much of my family still lives. Our reason for going was heavy. We were called to appear in court related to the accident that killed my younger brother. At the time, my son was barely three months old. We had originally been summoned just ten days before Christmas, and I was deeply grateful we were able to delay until the new year.

Even then, my husband and I were carrying more than we had ever held before. Taking our tiny baby, his immune system still so fragile, out into the big wide world felt daunting. Airports, airplanes, crowds, germs. Everything felt like too much, especially with my baby brother on my mind. Still, we went because it was important for my family to stand together on that day. The travel went smoothly, and the trip itself held unexpected grace. Many family members met my son for the first time. Joy and sorrow existed side by side that week.

I remember standing outside the courtroom, holding my crying baby, knowing I needed him to quiet so I could return inside to give my carefully written statement. I was being pulled in two directions at once, toward honoring my grief and toward life, toward my past and toward my present responsibility. It was the first time I understood that grief does not pause for motherhood, and motherhood does not wait for grief to heal.

That trip made me cry a lot. Yet I am still glad we went. I needed to be there and although my life is totally different now as mother than it was when the accident happened, it was a great honor to my brother’s memory.

What I learned in January was this. I am more resilient than I knew. Motherhood has been the healing I did not realize I needed. Losing my baby brother will forever scar me, but it also clarified how I now see the world. The only way forward for me is to live with a deep trust in the Catholic reverence for life, to hold suffering, birth, death, and love as sacred realities, and to surrender fully to the Lord’s plans for our eternity, not just our time here.

Some wounds do not close. They simply become holy ground.

That first flight gave me courage. It was the reason I later said yes to an invitation to our family reunion in July at my aunt and uncle’s lake house. Once you have flown with a baby, a second trip feels possible. Saying yes to that relatively inexpensive vacation felt like a blessing, not because it was easy, but because it taught me that we were capable of traveling as parents.

In February, something astonishing happened. Our house was delivered to our land. We had broken ground at the tail end of 2024, in the quiet cold of winter. The foundation had been poured, but the home itself arrived in two massive halves on semi trucks rolling down our rural road. Watching our future arrive that way, wrapped in plastic and split neatly in two, was mind boggling.

Choosing to build a manufactured home came with clear advantages and real challenges, but above all it was fast. From February, when the house was set on its foundation, to moving in mid July, God’s hand was evident throughout the process.

In March, we watched our home slowly come together, though it was still very much a construction site. I turned 28 that month, and we spent my birthday wandering Yorktown on a blustery, beautiful day. Motherhood had stripped my idea of birthdays for myself as big celebrations, but it had replaced it with something deeper. For the first time in my life, I called my mother and thanked her, truly thanked her, for giving birth to me.

March also marked nine years of dating with my husband. On our anniversary, he proposed to me in what would one day be our bedroom. I remember standing in that unfinished space, feeling pulled forward into a future that did not yet exist, while still needing to stay grounded in the daily needs of the present. There were no rose petals, no candles. Just us, choosing permanence in a place not yet finished.

It was perfect for us.

April and May arrived gently, breathing new life into a world tired of winter. As we waited on our home’s completion, we visited the land nearly every day. Spring’s rebirth mirrored the anticipation we carried. Watching my son grow, his babyness unfolding as we made new friends, went to the park, and soaked up the sun, made the waiting sweet.

Because of that season of waiting, I learned that courage does not always announce itself.

This season required courage of a quieter kind. I began attending a baby and toddler storytime at the local library on Monday mornings. It was there I met other local moms for the first time. Until then, I had been quite isolated. Community did not appear effortlessly. It required repetition, vulnerability, and resilience. I kept showing up even when it felt awkward. And now, I have a small circle of friends I can send Christmas cards to. People I can text to make playdate plans with. Friends who came to our wedding. That did not happen by accident. It happened because I chose to remain present and persistent through discomfort. This kind of community is still being built, slowly and intentionally.

On June 1st, our son was baptized at our parish. It was a day of deep joy, made richer by the presence of family who traveled to be with us. That sacrament stands as one of the spiritual anchors of our year.

June also brought packing. Our tiny apartment slowly filled with boxes as we waited for our home to be finished. Dates kept shifting. One week became two. Then another delay. Eventually, the builders stopped giving timelines altogether. It required patience and faith. We prayed constantly, not for speed, but for steadiness.

In mid July, we finally received our certificate of occupancy. We could move in.

And then we left.

One week after moving into our new home, with boxes stacked to the ceiling, we boarded a plane for the family reunion in Georgia. The chaos we left behind was real and unresolved. But the pause was necessary. After months of constant motion, we were forced to be still.

The trip was as restful as life with an eight month old allows. It gave us space to step away from the all consuming project of the new house, to breathe, to enjoy family, and to remember that life was still happening beyond the boxes and timelines.

When we returned home, August arrived with force. Unpacking felt like standing amid wreckage, pulled in every direction at once. Every room was filled with boxes. Our son was nine months old, crawling and pulling up on everything. The responsibility was unmistakable. I wanted to create order, to make the house function, to hold everything together. It felt like my dream of being an actual homemaker with a real home had finally come true, and yet I could not manage it all at once. I mistook limitation for failure, and exhaustion for inadequacy, and wondered if I was somehow falling short just as the dream was becoming real.

What I learned then was how to let go. I learned how to give myself more fully to my fiance when I felt I had no control. I had been carrying the weight as if it was mine alone, but togetherness was the only way through. We survived that season not by individual strength, but by shared surrender.

By mid August, our conversations turned toward marriage. Our son was nearing a year old, and we knew we wanted to expand our family. We also knew we wanted to be married first. After investing so much in our new home, we chose a small, intimate Catholic sacramental wedding, trusting that simplicity could still hold profound beauty.

In September, we set the date. November 1st. Our Pre Cana preparations began. Invitations were sent. Plans were made carefully and prayerfully. God provided at every turn.

That same month, another dream unfolded. We traveled back to Georgia for a third time this year to see my favorite band in concert, my first concert ever. This was not something that fit neatly into our life or our calendar. We left our son with my parents for just a few hours and stepped briefly outside our daily rhythm. It felt novel and rare, wildly outside of our normal, and entirely a gift. We had been busy and overwhelmed, with so many large things looming ahead of us, but this experience stood apart. It was an experiential gift Derek gave to me, one that felt almost out of the way of real life, and one I know I will never forget.

October arrived with tenderness. Our son turned one. He learned to walk. At his pediatric appointment, the doctor smiled and said, “Congratulations. You have a toddler now.” The words landed heavier than I expected.

What I learned then was how little control I truly have. Loving my son means stewarding his life, not owning or controlling it.

Some grief in motherhood is normal. It’s simply the price of watching love grow.

Then came the wedding. With less than a month to go, details multiplied. I was stretched. I prayed often. I let many things go. When our photographer called me “the chillest bride I’ve ever worked with,” I knew it was because I had prioritized what mattered.

On November 1st, standing at the altar, I looked into the eyes of my best friend. I had seen that gaze a million times before, but never had I felt more whole. Our covenant was sealed before God. It was the second greatest day of my life, after the birth of my son.

From that day forward, we committed to building a life of peace together. As we look toward 2026, that commitment looks like less travel and less noise, and a quieter, more deliberate investment inward, into each other, our family, our home, and our land.

As the year comes to a close, Advent has taught me how to stand still in the midst of that choice. Not pulled apart or scattered, but whole, present, and held by grace.

Three days before Christmas, I am sick, the gifts are unwrapped, and still, He is coming.

That feels like enough ground to stand on as we begin looking forward to 2026.

I’m sorry, friends, that I’ve been so absent from this space. I’m working on giving myself grace for the season of life we’ve just walked through. As I’ve written about elsewhere, we moved to the homestead this summer, traveled a bit more than we probably should have, and then decided it was time to get married.

And what a wedding it was. Truly, the most beautiful day of my life—right alongside the day my son came into this world. It was small and sacred, held in the little church where we’ve celebrated our faith every Sunday for nearly a year now. My closest family came, and on Derek’s side, just his parents and a handful of aunts, uncles, and cousins who could make it. Fewer than twenty-five souls in all, but every one of them known and loved.

My heart was pounding as I prepared to walk down the aisle. I’d never told anyone, but my quiet dream had always been to see my intended cry when he first saw me. And when I looked up and saw Derek’s tears, my own followed. I felt so beautiful, so full of love, so entirely open to life forever with my best friend. I smiled until my cheeks ached. My son was sweet and cheerful, playing with his cousins under the watchful eyes of his grandparents. The whole day felt like sunlight made visible—joy upon joy, and peace that felt divinely given.

The spiritual side of marriage was everything to us. We weren’t simply planning a celebration; we were preparing to spend eternity together, with all that means in the eyes of our Lord. There was such holiness in those vows—an awareness that we were stepping into something ancient and eternal.

Now that we are here, married in the eyes of God, my focus has turned toward reclaiming the rhythm of our home. It’s an explosion of wedding decorations and half-finished moving projects. In the last few days, I’ve washed the same load of laundry three times because I kept forgetting to put it in the dryer. It feels like a small miracle that we’ve managed to shift from convenience foods back to a few scratch-made dinners this week.

I’m trying to be patient with the process. I’m trying to be gentle with myself. But my ambition for a perfect schedule can be overwhelming sometimes. The baby isn’t sleeping early enough, and we’re all staying up later than we should—but at least we’re sleeping. Sometimes we run too many errands—but at least the list is getting shorter.

Derek is the rock our family is built on, steady and faithful. He brings such peace to the home, even when the rhythm falters. He’s not naturally a creature of routine, but that’s where my calling as mother and new wife comes in—to shape our days into a gentle pattern of prayer, work, and rest.

As the holidays approach, I know our routines will keep shifting, but my goal is simple: to find our rhythm again. To stop forgetting laundry. To stop leaning on frozen meals when my brain feels like mush. To breathe grace into our home and remember that even this—this imperfect, half-unpacked life—is holy.

And maybe that’s what I’m learning most right now: that rhythm doesn’t begin with order, and it certainly doesn’t begin with perfection. It begins with love. With the vows spoken before God, with the husband who wipes away his tears as you walk toward him, with the baby who won’t quite settle on time but still curls into your chest at the end of the night. Rhythm begins with remembering Who steadies us, even when the days feel uneven.

So I find myself praying quietly as I move through these small domestic moments—folding laundry, reheating leftovers, picking up toys again and again—that the Lord will shape our family life into something peaceful and enduring. Not flawless. Not rigid. Just faithful.

Lord,
teach us how to build this home together.
Bless the marriage You’ve begun,
and let Your grace fill the cracks of our imperfect days.
Give us patience for what’s unfinished,
joy in what’s ordinary,
and love that keeps growing, even in the mess.
Make our home a small reflection of Your peace.
Amen.

This first episode is all about why I’ve chosen to start creating here on Substack in a new way. Writing has always been dear to me, but it’s slow work in this season of motherhood and homesteading. These short podcasts feel like a gentler rhythm. It’s something I can share with you more often, even as life stays full and a little chaotic.

I’ll still write when I can, but I’m excited to speak directly to you in this space. Thank you for reading, for listening, and for walking alongside me. It’s such a gift to share this journey of mothering, homemaking, and homesteading, and I hope it brings encouragement and connection to you wherever you are

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Life in those last few weeks felt like drowning. My head was barely above water, heart pounding against the weight of everything unfinished. And yet somehow, I never lost sleep. I carried the pressure without cracks showing, meeting it with as much grace as I could muster. This was my dream come true after all

Then, in a moment that felt like God’s provision, my parents stepped in. Just seven days before we had to leave town for a family reunion we already had flights for, they offered to hire movers. It was an incredible gift—but also a frantic one. We had only a week to prepare, and we came close but not close enough. Some things went into boxes, some didn’t. Labels were hastily scrawled or forgotten altogether.

When the movers arrived, I stepped outside to meet them and felt the weight of goodbye pressing on me—our apartment stripped down to echoes, our baby’s first home about to be emptied. Three friendly, gracious men stood before me, joking and chatting as though this was just another Tuesday. They must have known how hard the day was for us, because they lightened it however they could.

Inside, Derek and I kept passing the baby back and forth as our home became less and less baby proofed as things emptied out. I knew all the answers the movers needed, and he had the muscle to help them, so I ended up sitting with our son in the car—the quietest, coolest place we could find. It was hard to let go of control and to trust Derek would answer their questions as I would have. While our entire life was carried past me, box by box, into the truck I felt exhausted yet excited.

And then, in one single day, it was done. All our worldly possessions loaded into one vehicle, and then delivered into our new home. It felt miraculous—our whole life condensed into a single box truck.

But miracles don’t always look tidy.

The boxes (labeled and unlabeled) exploded into the new house in no particular order. Kitchen boxes ended up stacked in the office, book boxes scattered into the baby’s room, furniture jammed tight in the living room. We went from an empty apartment to a home packed to the brim, but in no discernible pattern.

What I didn’t expect was how hard those first nights would be. Packing chaos had been tolerable because I could walk away from it. But waking up in the new house—my dream come true—and finding myself buried alive in disorder was something else. I couldn’t find utensils to cook. I couldn’t find clean nursing bras. Even the simplest rhythms of life were interrupted. I had imagined crossing the threshold with joy, but instead I met exhaustion, frustration, and more than a few tears.

I’m not proud of how undone I felt those first 2–3 days. The house I had longed for didn’t feel like home yet, and I couldn’t rest in it. But Derek met me with grace. He listened, he carried more than his share, he loved me patiently when I was frayed thin. Through him, I was reminded that grace doesn’t just come in grand miracles like movers showing up—it comes in the daily tenderness of being held when you fall apart.

About three days after the move, I finally felt human again. That morning, I found my kettle and made myself a cup of tea. The house was still a maze of boxes, but we had slept enough to wake without feeling like zombies. I stood in the kitchen with warm tea in hand, our son playing at my feet, and for the first time I thought: *Wow, we actually live here now. This is home.*

Now, weeks later, we are still unearthing the order I hope to build here. Many boxes remain, but corners are beginning to take shape. I can see the scaffolding of the life we’re building—books are on shelves, clean clothes folded in drawers, meals simmering on the stove. It is slow, but it is beautiful.

And through the unpacking and the chaos, what anchors us is routine. In these weeks we’ve worked hard to give our son a strong bedtime rhythm, and he’s napping better than ever in his own room. Somehow, even with the living room still stacked with boxes, life feels more manageable. The house may not yet be fully ordered, but our family is finding its rhythm. And that rhythm is what makes it feel like home.

Looking back, I see the whole move as one long lesson in humility. I had imagined it would be triumphant. That it was would feel like the culmination of years of dreaming. Instead, it revealed my limits, my impatience with disorder, and my deep dependence on both human and divine grace.

And maybe that’s exactly what a homestead is supposed to teach: that life here is not built in one day, or even in one summer, but slowly—box by box, night by night, routine by routine, with sweat and with love.

Pray for me friends, and let me know if I can pray for you too.

Dear friends,

I owe you an apology for my absence here. It has been a whirlwind few weeks: we packed up our little apartment, moved into our new home on the homestead (a story I can’t wait to share), and almost immediately left for a ten-day family reunion. Between the packing, the moving, and the traveling—with a baby in tow, no less—my days have been bursting at the seams, and writing had to take a backseat.

But this piece has been simmering in my mind all along. Now that we’re nearly home again, I’m ready to settle in and start writing more regularly. I have so much to tell you about this transition into a new chapter—the land, the house, the rhythms we’re discovering—but for now I want to share what has been weighing heaviest on my heart: baby sleep.

I’ll be honest: I am an imperfect first-time mom. Some days it feels like I’m stitching together motherhood from scraps—part crunchy ideals, part clinical advice, and a whole lot of improvisation. I like to think I’ve got plenty of crunchy notches in my belt. Heck we even live on our homestead now, though it has a long way to go. I bake sourdough, brew raw kombucha, and mostly clean with citrus infused vinegar, along with using plenty of herbal remedies in my home, but I also read the books, the blogs, the pediatrician-approved “methods.” I’ve tried to weave the wisdom and the science of both worlds into something that makes sense for me, my fiancé, and our little boy.

But when it comes to sleep, I feel lost. And I keep circling the same question: What are we doing?

From the very beginning, my son has always slept physically close, but without specifically bed sharing. We did many contact naps in the beloved wrap carrier when he was my tiny new bean. At night he spent four months in a bassinet pressed against my bedside, then the pack-and-play just an arms reach away. He has never spent the night more than three feet from my bedside. And yet, in this chaotic season of moving and traveling, I’ve given in—letting him sleep in the bed between us just so I can survive the night. I love the cuddles, I do, but I also know this is not sustainable. I want our bed to be a sacred place for me and my love, and I want to reclaim our evenings. So it’s not just about where the baby sleeps, but also when because currently he’s staying awake hours into the evening, sometimes even until the wee hours past midnight. I’m not proud of it, but I haven’t found another way to get him to sleep. So again I am lost as a first time mom wondering: what are we doing?

We tried sleep training a bit in the past when he was about six months old. I had read so many glowing accounts and spoken to moms who swear by it, so I thought it was worth a try. That first night, I laid him in his crib after our evening routine and set the timer. Ten minutes passed—ten long minutes of screaming—before I went in to comfort him. I rubbed his back, whispered in his ear, but didn’t pick him up. He didn’t stop. Another fifteen minutes went by, and still he cried, the kind of crying that sounds like desperation.

I lifted him into my arms, hoping my voice and my touch would soothe him. But even there, he thrashed and wailed. I was overwhelmed, undone. After trying to soothe him for a while I laid him back down and tried again to wait it out. By the time I finally picked him up for the last time, more than an hour had passed. His eyes were red and swollen, his cheeks wet, his nose running down his face. He looked at me with a gaze so weary and broken, and then—he vomited. All over me, over him, over the crib and the floor. His whole little body emptied in one heave.

After that I stopped formal sleep training. And I’ve been asking myself ever since: if not that, then what are we doing? Can I really nurse him to sleep every night? Can I spend hours each evening walking him around in the carrier? How do I get him to sleep without dreading the sunset every night?

Because the truth is, right now our nights are chaos. Bedtime stretches on for hours—nursing, rocking, pacing the floor, laying him down only to pick him back up again. Some nights he finally surrenders at 11, sometimes even later. By then we are all exhausted, frayed, questioning everything. My fiance and I then just collapse and fall straight asleep with nothing resembling an evening routine. I long for just an hour to myself at the end of the day to keep home in the quiet of a restful moment. These moments feel impossible when the entire evening is consumed by the baby’s sleep chaos.

I imagine the ideal rhythm goes something like:

• A warm bath for baby

• Dim lights in his new nursery

• Lotion rubbed gently into his tiny legs

• Clean and cozy PJ’s

• The same song hummed softly night after night

• Him feeling: this is nighttime, and I am safe

• ?? And then somehow he falls asleep and stays sleeping in his crib ??

But still the practical questions rise up. What happens after the whole routine is done—the bath, the lotion, the dim lights, the quiet song—and he is still wide awake, full of energy, crawling around and giggling? Where do you put him down, and for how long do you leave him there before trying again? What do you do when the cries turn desperate, or when he climbs all over you the moment you sit with him? How do you maintain the blessed consistency everyone swears by when life itself is so unpredictable?

Because the truth is, I don’t want to be a permanent co-sleeper. I want my bed to remain the place where my fiancé and I can rest and be at peace together in the evenings. I also don’t want to return to the night that left us both broken and sick with tears and vomit. I want a middle way: closer to sleep training in the sense that I long for him to fall asleep and stay asleep, in his own crib, in his own room, but without breaking both our hearts in the process.

So again I ask: if we crunchy moms are not sleep training, what are we doing? How do you actually teach a baby to rest on their own? Where is that elusive middle ground between independence and comfort, between structure and gentleness?

I want to mother with a crunchy heart and a practical mind—to honor my instincts and my child’s needs, but also to build the kind of structure that helps us all flourish. Right now, I don’t know what that balance looks like, mostly because I’m not sleeping much. I only hope we’re fumbling toward it, one long night at a time.

For now, I don’t have the answers. I only have questions for more seasoned mothers and fathers—and a baby who needs me tonight. Please friends, with little judgement, comment below what wisdom you might have to share.

A Prayer for the Night

Lord, grant me patience when I am weary, tenderness when I am tested, and wisdom when I feel lost. Teach me to love this little one as You love me—steadfastly, without condition. May this home be filled with rest, peace, and the assurance that even in the chaos, You are near. Amen.

I’ve been quiet here lately, mostly because I kept thinking we’d be moving any day now. First the deadline was June 1st, then a one-week extension, then another, and now here we are on June 26th. Technically… the house is complete. But we’re still waiting on the final inspection and the certificate of occupancy before we can officially move in.

The last time I wrote about it, I said we were days away. I believed it, too. But God had other plans—and apparently, one of them was giving me more opportunities to practice patience. He’s generous like that.

In the meantime as the extensions kept coming, we’ve started packing little by little. Non-essentials have gone into boxes. I keep catching glimpses of bare shelves and cleared surfaces and feeling a quiet ache rise up in my chest. It’s bittersweet, watching our tiny apartment change. The farewell is inevitable now, and I’m struggling to accept it.

I’m deeply looking forward to life on the new homestead. A bigger home all our own, space to grow—literally and figuratively. But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a kind of grief braided into the excitement. This apartment has been so much more than a temporary stop. It’s the place Derek and I learned to live together on our own, the place I found out I was pregnant. It’s where I received the call that shattered my heart—the call about my baby brother’s accident. And it’s where I brought my son home for the very first time, a real breath of hope in my life.

I’ve changed here. Grown here. We all have. And somehow the walls have held it all with quiet fidelity. I don’t think I realized just how much a place can mean until I started getting ready to leave it.

It’s not just about sentiment, either. We’ve filled this apartment to the brim with our ambitions. There’s not much room left, but what we have is precious: the dehydrator, the canner, the big pots, the seed collection, the books, the instruments, the art. It’s not a storage unit for stuff—it’s a living space. A life space. We don’t just come home to rest our heads before running back out into the world. We live here. We work, grow, eat, pray, learn, and laugh here. The new house will become that in time, but for now, it’s just a blank canvas—and if I’m honest, sometimes the blankness makes me anxious.

My heart has been so full these past few weeks. Full of stress, joy, longing, anticipation, grief. I haven’t carried it all gracefully every day. I’ve been short with those I love. I’ve cried. I’ve clung to hope and crumbled under worry. But through it all, I’ve seen the shape of God’s mercy. This has been a season of heavy blessings—a real burden-of-abundance kind of challenge, and I only pray I keep growing for the better.

Also… moving in the middle of a heat wave here in the south? Absolutely going to be miserable. But I know it’ll make that first night in our new home feel all the more hard-won and holy.

Here’s to what’s ahead, and to what we’ve built with love in the waiting.

Some pictures to show you the progress!

I woke before the baby for once, thanks to a strategic alarm. The quiet moment felt deliberately placed by God. The Saturday behind us had worn our little one out in all the sweetest ways: three hours of car seat napping after an afternoon on the Chesapeake Bay, his toes sandy, my mother calling him her “little fish” while Derek carried him through gentle waves. I had been tired out by all of the activity too, but I was also so grateful for the opportunity to host so many of my favorite people in my neck of the woods.

That afternoon the baby and I had made a solo airport run to collect his godmother, a friend who has known me since our Catholic youth‑group days. She slid into the back seat beside his car‑seat, watching his drowsy face until his eyelids surrendered and fluttered shut again. It was a miracle that he slept for the entire round trip, 3 hours total. Back at the rental house, chili simmered, scratch made cornbread filled the air like October even though it was June, and family filled every corner: Derek’s cousin—the soon‑to‑be godfather—trading jokes with my brother; my mom and mother‑in‑law clattering spoons as they set the table; the baby making the rounds of every available lap. By nine o’clock we shepherded only the godparents back to our apartment—just the seven* of us if you count the Holy Spirit—and the small‑space intimacy felt like a gift after the cheerful roar of a crowd. We talked about the rite ahead, about faith, about life, until tired smiles nudged us all to our beds, hearts satisfyingly over‑full.

Writing about faith publicly still scares me even though I am proud to be Catholic; every sentence feels like trying to describe wind to the sky. I’m unfinished, forever sanding impatience and unkindness from my rough edges. Yet our priest once laughed and said, “I’m a practicing Catholic because I still haven’t gotten it right.” His easy grin made space for my imperfections; if God delights in all of our practice, perhaps He delights in mine, too.

He has already show me how he loves our son fiercely. At just two days old, on the cusp of emergency surgery, Derek lifted sink water in cupped hands, let it trickle over the tiniest head I’d ever held, and whispered, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” I held my tiny baby with tears running down my face, knowing that at least his soul was safe. That baptism was stitched with fear and raw hope; Sunday’s ceremony was its celebration. He recovered flawlessly from that surgery and has been in perfect health ever since.

On Sunday morning the alarm chimed at eight, and the apartment bloomed with motion: triple‑checking the diaper bag while relatives arrived to caravan the forty minutes south to the parish we call home. Pastures strewn with spring wildflowers blurred by, and in the rear‑view mirror I kept catching the minivan and truck procession behind us as an unintended, joyful pilgrimage.

Mass unfurled like a hymn I’d known forever. When Father invited us to the font, our son’s hands shot forward, eager to splash in the water, and I gently lowered him into the basin. The christening oil glistened as Father traced a shining cross on his forehead, a delicious smell any Catholic parent is not likely to forget. A candle trembled into flame. Each communal “Amen” filled my lungs with more than air. This, I thought, is belonging: wet baby hair, hot wax, relatives wiping happy tears, and a parish who knows us and our baby no matter how loud he is during mass every Sunday.

Lunch afterward tasted of shared delight as we gathered in a nearby small restaurant. But the real dessert came later, when we carried coffee carafes and cake into the construction dust of our unfinished house. Sunlight pooled on cardboard‑covered floors as we pointed out where the kitchen table will sit, where a family altar might live. I pictured our son’s first toddling steps across that threshold toward the domestic church Derek and I are practicing into being: homemade meals, heartfelt rosaries, bedtime stories, whispered benedictions.

Sunday ended as softly as it began. Drowsy from sacraments and company, the baby fell asleep on my chest while the last light slipped away. I whispered thank‑You after thank‑You into his downy hair until language failed and only gratitude remained—water and light still shimmering behind my eyelids.

*Derek, me, our son, his godparents, the godfather’s fiancée—and, of course, the Holy Spirit.

We’re two weeks away now (barring any unforeseen delays) from beginning the move out of our little 500-square-foot apartment

This little apartment has held so many beginnings. It’s the place where my pregnancy tests turned positive, the home we brought our first baby into, and the walls that witnessed so much growth in both Derek and me. It’s always felt like a stepping stone, but one I’ve loved dearly. Cozy, tight, and special—a space where our life has been full and sacred.

Now we’re stepping into something bigger, both literally and figuratively. An entire 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house, and an acre to shape and dream upon. Beyond that, the other 18 acres next door are owned by Derek’s parents. We are walking into a life without much limit, except those set by our own capacity and vision.

I’ve already begun the garden. Over six thousand square feet of future food and beauty. The front yard will become a cottage garden: perennials, flowers, and lots of color. Right now, it’s just construction debris and grass. So much grass. We don’t even own a mower yet, and the task ahead of us feels enormous. Turning an old cattle pasture into a thriving homestead is no small thing.

And neither is the move.

We have an entire storage unit to relocate. A kitchen stocked for a homesteader in this tiny apartment. Stacks of books, tools, clothing, and all the little sentimental things that build a life. We've been saving canning jars, gardening tools, and kitchen gear for projects I’ve dreamed about but never had the space for. The idea of transferring it all and then creating order in a brand-new space feels like a mountain to climb. Exciting, but immense.

I think about how I’ll manage it with a baby in tow. How I’ll baby-proof while unpacking. How I’ll cook from scratch with boxes in the way. How I’ll make a home while my hands are always full.

It’s hard to imagine the outcome. Right now, it just looks like work. But after church this past weekend, we went out to the new house and I caught a glimpse of what’s ahead. We now have new floors, smooth and clean, ready for bare baby knees. For the first time, I let my son crawl freely, watching with joy as he explored the open rooms of the house that will soon be his home. He moved with curiosity and excitement, and something in me softened as I watched him, so completely at ease there.

When we went to the new homestead yesterday, we brought our books and folding camp chairs and sat on the deck with cold drinks in hand. The breeze moved through us, through the bones of the house. We could hear the road—constant, yes—but if you sit long enough, it starts to sound like waves.

We settled in quietly while the baby napped in his car seat. And for a moment, it felt like we’d already arrived.

No internet. No routines. Just our home, still new and still feeling like a miracle. I sat and thought: I want to remember this. I want to sit here again when the kitchen is full and dinner is simmering and laundry hums in the background—and still feel this calm.

Even when the boxes are gone and the pantry is stocked and the garden is blooming, I want to remember what it felt like to sit on that unfinished deck with the people I love and breathe in the peace of almost-home.

My son is on the move now. He's 7 months old, and just a few weeks ago he was cautiously rocking on hands and knees, tentative scooting, and lots of reaching. Now, it’s definite forward momentum. He army crawls with determination across the floor, chasing toys, laundry baskets, and whatever else catches his eye. His favorite new “toy” is Daddy’s guitar, which he crawls toward and then whacks while it sits in it’s stand. The subtle musical percussive whacks are delightful. There’s so much joy in his new movement, and joy in mine too—watching, guiding, scooping him up when he gets too close to corners, the edge, the unknown.

This season of motion has come suddenly. One day, he stayed mostly where I put him. The next, he was moving with a kind of purpose and speed that made me blink. We’re not just in babyhood anymore—we’re in the beginning of something else. It’s a new chapter—one with bumps and bruises, but also with wide-eyed wonder and brave little scoots. There are little falls now. Sometimes he bonks his head when he moves too fast and falls over or misjudges his target as he crawls toward it. Luckily, he's still close to the ground, and most bumps are minor, but for such a new little person, even a small tumble can feel like the world has shifted. The tears come quickly, and I am always there to scoop him up and console him. This is part of the new season too—these stumbles and lessons. They don’t scare me, though they’re never pleasant for either of us. I know they are necessary. I know I can’t protect him from everything all the time (least of all, gravity). It’s a while new chapter with bumps and bruises, but also exploration and wonder.

I can feel the shift happening in my bones. The still, sleepy newborn days are behind us now. And while I miss the way he used to curl up on my chest and sleep for hours, I am also grateful. Grateful for the spark in his eye when he discovers something new, for the way he looks back at me for reassurance, for the giggle he lets out when he can reach something new. And grateful, too, for more sleep—for the rest Derek and I are both slowly beginning to reclaim as we settle into this new rhythm.

As the baby moves, I am moved too. This phase demands more of me—more energy, more presence, more prayer. I find myself asking God for the grace to let go of what was and embrace what is. I ask for the courage to keep up, the humility to slow down, and the wisdom to know when to simply watch and cheer him on. And I pray to be the kind of mother who tends rather than clings. I’ve seen the danger of devouring motherhood—where love becomes control, where a mother cannot loosen her grip as her child grows. That kind of closeness can smother rather than nurture. I don’t want that. I want to be a gardener, not a martyr. One who waters, supports, and then lets go. This child is not mine to possess. My son is His. I am simply the trusted steward.

All while my son is learning to crawl, our life is shifting in other ways too—stretching, unfolding. We were just told that the target date for completion on our new home is only three weeks away!!! After months of waiting, everything is beginning to align. Electricity hums quietly on the property. The septic system is in place. Paint has been chosen and purchased. The list of tasks, once so daunting, now feels like something we can actually finish. It’s all coming together.

It’s so remarkable to be this close. I can hardly wait for my son to have 1,200 square feet to explore instead of our tiny 500-square-foot apartment. I dream of the day he grows into a running little boy with acres and acres to roam. Seeing our property grow and change this spring has filled me with so much hope. I absolutely cannot wait to leap into this next chapter—even if it arrives alongside the bittersweetness of my baby growing up. Every change asks us to leave behind something we love as we grow into the unknown.

This is what motherhood is, I think. A series of motions and devotions. New wins always come with babyhood losses, but we transition together. We learn together. And just when we think we’ve found our footing, we take another step forward—hand in hand, heart in motion.

Lord, help me stay present through each transition of my son’s life. Help me delight in what is, even as what was slips quietly into memory. And give me the grace to move with him—joyfully, prayerfully, step by step. Amen

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The rhythm of our days has unraveled into threads I can’t quite gather. And at the heart of it all is attention—my attention—pulled in a hundred directions, but always circling back to my beloved son. We’re in a season—one I didn’t expect to last this long—where his sleep is inconsistent, unpredictable, and often deeply exhausting. The regression hit weeks ago (as I wrote about here) and hasn’t let up quite yet. We have almost no reliable nap time, no reliable bedtime, and little structure I can point to and build a day around.

It used to be that I could count on a short morning nap—just long enough to tidy up the house or take a deep breath. And the afternoon nap usually gave me time to read, write, or make dinner in peace. Now, if he naps, I usually do too. This is why I haven't been able to post here for a little while. Truthfully, homemaking has slowed to the bare essentials. I keep us fed. I keep us clean. Everything else waits.

I wouldn’t mind the slowness of it, if I wasn’t so tired. The kind of tired that makes my bones ache. The kind of tired that sneaks into my prayers and my posture and makes even the gentlest tasks feel steep. Being woken up over and over again by such pure, intense need is hard. But I always comfort. He needs my reassurance and love. And I need him.

We are so lovingly intertwined that even in my most exhausted, frustrated moments, I am never upset with him. Only with the challenge itself. He’s not the problem—he’s the joy I would walk through any hardship to experience.

Still, I crave a routine. A rhythm. A sense of knowing what comes next. When I was pregnant, I read everything I could about parenting, hoping to understand how to nurture a calm and grounded home life. Two books stayed with me: Seven Times the Sun by Shea Darian and You Are Your Child’s First Teacher by Rahima Baldwin Dancy. Their words describe rhythm like a gentle song—familiar, grounding, and nourishing to the soul. They made me believe I should aim for a healthy family rhythm from day one.

One passage from Shea Darian’s Seven Times the Sun especially resonated with me:

"How different our world would be if children were provided with an environment of stability and health from which they could learn to trust the world and their personal perceptions of it" (Darian, p. 15)

Another line I underlined back then keeps coming to mind now:

"So much of discipline for young children involves self-discipline on the part of the adults: Keeping regular rhythms in home life, working on your own patience and emotional responses, being there when your child needs interaction" (Dancy, p. 110).

As a first-time parent, I read those words with admiration, hoping to embody them with grace. But now, in the thick of this season, they feel more aspirational than attainable. I want to live into that vision, but right now, presence—raw and real—is the closest I can get.

These days, presence is everything. And presence begins with attention. I spend nearly every waking hour tuned into my baby—watching him, learning him, following the rhythm of his needs and discoveries. We sit together on his play mat, I read him books, hand him toys, and we explore the excitement of crawling together. I cook with him nearby in his high chair, narrating each step and showing him each ingredient. Some afternoons, I even pull out an old hobby from my days in the theatre—juggling—just to see the delight in his face. We sit together on the living room floor, and his eyes light up as the colorful balls fly through the air, and sometimes across the room when I inevitably miss. Other times he’s in the baby carrier on my back or hip while I stir pots or sort laundry. Sometimes I only fold one shirt or hang one damp towel before he needs my full attention again, and I always try to give it.

So I am learning to see all of that attention as the very heart of mothering. Not a distraction from the work—but the work itself. My presence is the greatest gift I can give him. It is not wasted. It is not lesser than a list of chores or a tidy house. I know I am imperfect—some days and nights are harder than others. I don’t always do it all perfectly. But I am flexible, and I am trying. At nearly seven months old and newly mobile, he cannot be expected to entertain himself for longer than the time it takes me to wash my hands. He deserves my best, and right now, my best looks like trying to be attentive, responsive, and loving.

Just this morning, we were invited to spend time with another friend of mine and her sweet baby. But my son, who didn’t fall asleep until midnight, slept in past ten in the morning. We had to adjust, rearrange, negotiate our day to make the play date possible. I felt embarrassed in some private corner of my mind, a little unsure of myself. I wonder privately: how do other families do this? How can they build schedules and keep appointments and go about their days while my attention feels stretched so thin? Some days, I feel more like I’m surviving than mothering, reacting instead of leading. And yet, even this has its own quiet rhythm—the rhythm of responsiveness, of learning to be tenderly attuned to my baby's needs.

Sometimes, sitting with these thoughts, a deeper fear stirs quietly beneath the surface. If this is where I am with one baby—how will I ever grow into the mother of more? How can we grow our family if I can’t even seem to hold this rhythm together? It’s a quiet fear. An insecurity I carry like a folded note in my pocket. One I hope my readers won’t hold against me.

But I write it down here because I know I’m not alone. Somewhere out there, another mother is rocking her baby through another napless afternoon, unsure when the next nap will come. She’s watching her carefully imagined routine crumble under the weight of real life. She’s loving deeply, giving endlessly, and wondering why it all still feels so hard.

To her—and to myself—I say: you are not doing it wrong. You’re just in a season. A season that won’t last forever. A season that requires more presence than productivity. More grace than structure.

And I want to look back on this season and know that I chose well. Attention, given freely and intentionally, makes or breaks your parenthood. It is not something measured in hours or outcomes, but in the quiet faithfulness of being there—again and again—when we are needed most.

And one day, when the rhythm returns, it will feel like music again. We'll gather the threads and begin to reweave them, stronger, softer, stitched with love. But for now, we rock and we hold and we rise to meet each moment, however it arrives.

I would love to hear from you in my subscriber chat! Please join me in conversation there.

The First Seeds of the Garden have been planted, and they don’t look anything like I expected.

It feels like I haven’t written much about our new homestead lately. Maybe because so much of this season has been about waiting. We are waiting for the well to be dug. Waiting for the septic systems to be put in. Waiting for the power company to come and finally connect our electricity.

Every time we go out to the land, it is beautiful—achingly beautiful. We sit in folding camp chairs, sometimes in the backyard-to-be, sometimes on the unfinished deck, sometimes inside the quiet bones of our home. The house still smells like fresh-cut wood, still echoes when we speak. It feels like sitting inside a blank canvas, holding every color of our future, waiting to be brushed into life.

There are moments when the peace of it fills me to the brim. And there are moments when the nearness of it—the almost-thereness—makes it almost too painful to bear. We are so close. So very close. And so, on the hard days, I tuck it away in my mind. I turn my focus back to the beauty right here in this little apartment: my baby’s laugh, Derek’s steady hands, a well prepared meal, the quiet rhythm of our life as it is.

Right now, the waiting still stretches long before us. There’s a real chance we could be moving within the next month or two if everything falls into place. And yet, not really having a clear timeline complicates the feeling of waiting. Living rural means that contractors are few and far between, their schedules full, and communication sometimes slow. Some days, it feels like we’re endlessly sitting on waiting lists, even waiting for calls back from people we know intend to come. The weather shifts plans overnight. Some projects, unexpectedly, race ahead. Others—simple on paper—seem to stretch on forever. It’s a strange rhythm, and one we can’t control, no matter how much we might wish to.

But spring is here. And with spring comes hope. Life. Beauty.

And so—so does the grass.

On our last trip to the property, we began. Not by planting, but by preparing. We spread out wide sheets of black silage tarp over the tall, thick grass where our garden will one day be. We weighed them down with cinder blocks, working together under the bright, generous sky. Derek did the heaviest lifting, his strength a gift I am endlessly grateful for. His willingness to help me build my dreams feels like a prayer answered again and again.

It might seem like a small thing—laying down tarps to kill grass. But to me, it is the first turning of the soil. The first yes to the vision that has lived in my heart for years. A small, quiet beginning.

There’s a holiness to beginnings, I think. To the unseen work that has to happen underground before the shoots ever break the surface. I feel it every time I step onto that land: the possibility, the promise, the slow unfolding of all we have dreamed and prayed for.

We are doing what we can with what we have. We are planting hope, even in unseen ways. We are laying foundations, one tarp, one cinder block, one prayer at a time.

And when the time is right—oh, when the time is right—the garden will bloom.

This season of motherhood has come with its own quiet theme—one I didn’t anticipate, but now see blooming all around me: community. Finding it. Cultivating it. Enjoying it. It’s been quite the journey, and I am eager to see where God leads me in this effort.

I moved to this small town knowing no one but Derek and his parents. We had a few pleasant conversations with our landlord—a kind and generous man—but the relationship remained more business than personal. We arrived during the early Covid pandemic, when no one was gathering and doors remained closed. Just as our world began to open again, our lives were marked by profound sorrow. My younger brother was killed in a tragic car accident at the end of 2023 (a story I hope to share more fully in another post, when the time feels right). It’s still incredibly difficult to even write that it happened. The months that followed his loss were swallowed in grief. I lived quietly, withdrawn, consumed by sorrow until I discovered I was pregnant—a flicker of new life and hope that gently led me back into the world over the next 9 months.

For a long time after losing my baby brother, I stayed in isolation. But slowly a few months after my sons birth, I began to feel ready—ready to open the door, to show up, to try again. My heart, though bruised, began to soften to the idea of community, the craving of growing something new.

So a few weeks ago, I decided to start taking my son to our library’s toddler story time. He was five months old then, easily the youngest baby in the room. All of the other children could walk and dance and bop along to the rhymes and songs led by the wonderful librarian. Meanwhile, I sat there with my little one in my lap, smiling and drooling and occasionally spitting up on my sweater. He wasn’t quite ready to clap along or play with the toys, but he watched with wide eyes and gave generous smiles to everyone around us.

On that first day, I did something brave. I turned to the nearest mom and began making small talk. Eventually I said something along the lines of, “I don’t really know any other moms in this area, and I’m hoping to connect with other families.” She smiled and introduced a few of the other moms that she knew. We all made small talk—the kind that always starts with where you're from and how old your baby is. They invited me to a church play group later that week. One even offered her phone number. There was no gatekeeping, no sense of cliques or cattiness, just warmth and welcome.

It surprised me. Because for so much of my earlier life, female friendship felt complicated and convoluted. When I was in college, in social circles, I often felt like I was too much or not enough. I chased belonging by molding myself into whatever I thought others wanted me to be. I measured my worth by how many people invited me out or texted me back. It was heart wrenching to never fit in and feel worthy enough for my peers.

But over the past five years, I’ve had the time and the space to deeply get to know myself, and to improve my own relationship with myself. This kind of work doesn't earn you more online followers or a slew of party invitations but slowly rewires your sense of worth. I’ve learned to love myself not as a reaction to others, but simply as I am. That healing has built a quiet confidence. I know now that I am worthy of God's love, of friendship, of connection, of being seen and known—whether or not I’m immediately embraced by a group.

And so this season feels different. Because I’m not seeking community from a place of lack, but from a place of fullness. I’m not asking people to fill me—I’m offering my full self in friendship. A mother who knows who she is. A woman who is still tender in many ways, but strong in all the ones that matter.

So much of it reminds me of my time in the garden—watching something quiet take root, trusting in the unseen growth beneath the surface. Making friends as an adult feels a lot like planting a garden. It begins with soil—sometimes soft and ready, sometimes dry and hard-packed from years of loneliness or comparison. Then come the seeds: small conversations, shared laughter, exchanged phone numbers. Tiny things, so easy to overlook, but so full of potential, especially if they are nurtured.

Some seeds sprout quickly. Others need time. Some won’t grow at all—and that’s okay. There is no guarantee in a garden. But there is hope. And there is prayer. I’ve been praying over this little garden of connection, asking God to guide me to the right people, the right places. To help me water the soil with grace and patience. To remind me that it’s not about fast results but faithful tending.

In the past few weeks, I’ve met women who want to invite me into their lives. Who want to share dinners, play dates, and local events. I’ve met moms who remember my name, who ask about my son, who notice when we’re not there. These are the first green shoots. Nothing flashy, nothing certain. But they are growing. I’m tending this garden carefully, watering it with effort and vulnerability, praying that God will bless the harvest.

Because I want this for my son. I want him to grow up in community. To have friends. To learn from others. And I want him to see me modeling healthy, life-giving relationships—ones where we show up, and stay, and do the work of loving others well.

I want him to see that community, like faith, is something we nurture. That God often answers prayers through people. That opening our doors and our hearts is part of the sacred work of homemaking.

This season of friendship-building may look quiet from the outside. But inside, it feels like spring is blooming in my bones. The soil is soft, the seeds are planted, the roots are reaching deep, and the sunlight is warm. And in all of it, I see the hand of God—inviting, providing, and helping me grow alongside everything else that is just beginning to bloom.

Because in so many ways, this community I’m starting to grow is part of my healing. I carry the love of my baby brother with me every single day. His absence still aches. I still grieve. But motherhood has been a balm—steady, loving, anchoring me in the present. And now, these new friendships are softening the edges of sorrow, too.

Each time I show up, each time I let someone in, it feels like a new bloom—quiet but unmistakable. What once felt impossible—joy, connection, community—has begun to feel real again.

I moved to this small town feeling like our homestead’s empty fields: emotionally, relationally, barren. Now, those fields are beginning to blossom. Where there was silence, there is laughter. Where I felt shut down, I am open. A garden once desolate is now alive with color. And I, too, am growing.

So I pray, for myself and with all of you:

"Lord, let us keep planting with love and patience. Let us be faithful in the tending, and joyful in the growing.""

Lately I’ve felt like I have nothing to write about. Life is moving quietly, steadily forward. No big news, no grand milestone. Just another spring morning. But the closer I look, the more beauty I find tucked into the corners of these ordinary days.

Spring has arrived in full and it feels like the world is waking up with a deep breath of hope. The air is alive with the scent of earth and blossoms. Each day seems to stretch a little longer, glow a little brighter. The changing seasons always stir something in me, but this year, with a baby in my arms and a home rising on our land, it feels even more sacred. This is a time of becoming, of blooming, of moving from waiting to fullness.

My son will be six months old next week. Half a year. Half a year of being his mother, of learning him, loving him, growing into this new life. It feels like fulfilling a lifetime of purpose. I could do this forever and feel full.

He’s thriving. He’s learned to roll and push up with his strong little arms, scooting himself during tummy time like a tiny explorer with no map. He has no real direction yet—he just ends up somewhere new, delighted to have arrived. I watch him and think, same. We’re both moving through life without a clear sense of where we’re going, but finding joy in the movement.

He’s putting everything in his mouth these days, gnawing with serious concentration and leaving a trail of drool wherever he goes. I’m certain that his first tooth will make its debut any day now. And when it does, I’ll celebrate it like it’s the first flower of spring.

That’s what these days are—small bloomings, quiet beginnings, things that appear when you slow down and really look. I keep finding myself using the word remarkable about everything: my son, our new house, this unfolding life. Not because it’s extraordinary in the world’s eyes, but because it’s extraordinary to me. Because when I take the time to notice, it all feels sacred.

The house is coming along. The siding is on now, and in this bright spring light, it looks more and more like home. The way it fits on our land, like it was always meant to be there. The way the backyard is beginning to fill with dandelions and little purple flowers I don’t yet know the name of. Everything is growing.

It feels like nothing is happening day to day. But if I blink, I miss something beautiful. So I’m trying not to blink. I’m trying to live with eyes wide open—to the drool, to the dirt, to the blooms, to the progress that doesn’t announce itself but keeps quietly moving forward.

I know I’m not writing about the cultural topic of the week, or weighing in on whatever discourse is filling headlines and timelines today. I’m simply writing my life as it is—a journal, a record, a small testament to the beauty and delight that motherhood can be. This is my offering. A glimpse of the quiet glory found in ordinary days.

This life may be ordinary. But oh, it is remarkable.

What is making your life remarkable lately? Tell me in my subscriber chat! I would love to hear from you.

There is something about the first breath of spring that stirs hope in me. After months of grey skies and bare trees, the world begins to whisper of renewal. Tiny buds appear on branches that seemed dead only weeks ago. The air smells different—warmer, richer, full of something unseen but deeply felt. The first real green breaks through, and suddenly, winter feels like a distant memory. It is a quiet but certain promise: new life always comes.

This past week, I have been clinging to that promise more than ever.

My son is in the thick of his first sleep regression. For the first month of his life, sleep was one of our greatest challenges. He slept, but only in my arms or his father’s. If we laid him down, he would wake within minutes. It took six long weeks before he could rest independently for even short stretches. Since then, he has become a wonderful sleeper—better than I ever expected. He has slept through the night more times than I can count. And when he does wake, it is just to nurse, a quiet moment between us before we both drift easily back to sleep.

But now, at five months old, he has learned to roll onto his tummy—and cannot roll back. He wakes constantly, frustrated and stuck, calling for us to help him. Even beyond the rolling, I can feel the shift in him. His sleep is restless, his little body unsettled, his cries sharper, more urgent. He is growing, changing, and with it comes a disruption we cannot soothe away. The only way is through.

Derek and I have been walking this road the way we walked those early newborn nights—together. We take shifts. I hold the first watch, settling him, watching over him, meeting his needs for the first stretch of the night. Then, when I feel I can give no more, when my body is heavy with exhaustion, Derek wakes and takes over. Some nights, we wake every ten minutes. Some nights, we are gifted whole hours before the next stirring. It is unpredictable, but it is not unbearable.

Because I know this is temporary. I know that just as the trees bloom and the earth wakes from its slumber, this season too will pass. Just as God renews the earth, He renews us, even in our weariness. These long nights are not without purpose; they are a refining, a stretching, a quiet invitation to trust Him more deeply.

So I choose to embrace it. To treasure the moments when he sighs contentedly in my arms. To smile at his determination, even as it keeps me awake. To whisper prayers into the stillness of the night, asking for strength, for patience, for the grace to love him well even in my weariness. To remember that Christ, too, knew sleepless nights, that He, too, endured exhaustion for love. And if He is with me in all things, then surely He is here, beside me, in these dark, quiet hours, holding me as I hold my son.

Hope is not just for the easy days. It is for the long nights, the ones that stretch on endlessly but are never truly endless. It is for the moments when sleep is scarce, but love is abundant. It is for the mother rocking her baby in the dim light, knowing that even in her exhaustion, she is enough.

Spring is coming. The blossoms are budding. And one night soon, my little one will roll over and roll back, and he will sleep soundly again. Until then, I will hold onto the hope that new seasons always come, and the love that carries me through them all.

Thank you dear reader for joining me on this journey.

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They say that having a baby is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. They say, "It changes you," but when you ask how, they hesitate. The words never seem to come, only vague assurances wrapped in tired smiles—"You’ll understand when you have your own."

When I was pregnant, these warnings unsettled me. I had already been changed—reshaped by love and loss, by trials that left their mark. I had walked through fire before, and though it was hard to explain, I could always find the words when given the time. So why should this be different? Why should motherhood be an indescribable mystery, spoken of only in hushed, daunting tones?

To those awaiting their first child, to the mothers carrying life for the first time: let me offer you something different. Yes, parenthood will stretch you. Yes, it will call forth strength you don’t yet know you have. But you are not walking into an abyss. You are stepping into a love so deep it remakes you, not by breaking you, but by revealing what was already there. And through it all, God will be with you, guiding your hands, steadying your heart, giving you grace for every moment ahead.

There will be nights that test you, moments when exhaustion presses heavy on your bones. You will feel emptied out, and then—somehow—you will give a little more. And that is where the change happens. Not in the tiredness itself, but in the discovery that you are deeper than you knew. That your heart can expand beyond its edges. That your hands, though weary, will always lift again to cradle, to soothe, to love.

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One way I try to keep my home organized is by keeping a very messy bullet journal. Not the beautifully curated spreads you see on Pinterest, full of watercolor flourishes and perfect lettering—mine is scribbled, imperfect, sometimes chaotic. But in that mess, there is a kind of honesty, a reflection of real life, not an aesthetic ideal. It reminds me that order doesn’t always have to be pretty to be meaningful, that dignity is found not in perfection but in persistence. It is nothing like the beautifully curated pages you might see on YouTube tutorials (though I love looking at those too). It’s simply a page for each week where I track daily tasks and two simple routine checklists I aim to complete—one for daily habits, one for weekly goals.

My daily routine checklist includes my goals like brushing my teeth twice a day and flossing at least once, alongside tasks like feeding my sourdough starter and taking vitamins. It’s a simple way to keep track of the tasks that make up the rhythm of my life, and honestly, it’s a way to track my aspirations for what my ideal days would look like. Rarely do I check off everything on my lists every day, let alone the weekly goals, but at least they are there, written in ink, inspiring me to become the person I want to be.

One of the daily goals I have for myself is to tidy the kitchen every night before going to bed. This involves a simple round-up of dirty dishes, which get deposited in the sink before I wipe down all the counters and the table. Then, I aim to empty the sink. If I am being truly honest the nightly routine of standing at the sink, looking out a dark window with my hands covered in suds as I scrape, scrub, and rinse has been a source of real annoyance in the past.

You see, we don’t have a dishwasher like most modern homes do. This is a rental apartment, hardly meant for a full-time, from-scratch daily cook like myself. It’s lovely but not ideal in many ways. Trudging through handwashing more dishes than my woefully shallow sink is intended to handle has not always been easy. But choosing to see this task as an honor to give myself and my family has changed everything.

Now, as I stand at the sink, warm water running over my hands, I think of Jesus kneeling to wash the feet of His disciples. How He, the Son of God, bent low in service, choosing love in the form of simple, necessary work. I think of how love is so often shown not in grand gestures, but in humble service. Love looks like hands in soapy water. Love looks like tidying up after another meal shared, making space for tomorrow’s bread to be baked, tomorrow’s plates to be filled. And in these small moments of service, I find a deeper connection to my faith—a quiet, steady offering of care, just as He showed us.

I imagine families in other parts of the world where indoor plumbing isn’t even an option, and I feel gratitude for my much-disliked sink. I find grace in putting on music or a good podcast to make the task lighter. The dignity that it gives my kitchen—to treat it as worthy of cleanliness every day—is what brings me to do this task on the nights I simply do not want to. I imagine that my family deserves the dignity of not living with filth growing on plates of days-old food. And ultimately, I think of who I want my son to know me as.

I want to be known as the mother who provided tasty and healthy meals while also maintaining clean dishes. A safe home is not just one where he is not exposed to dangerous things but one where cleanliness is upheld. My family deserves the dignity of my efforts to do the dishes.

And beyond them, I deserve it too. The work I do in my home is not meaningless. It is not drudgery. It is service, it is love, it is an act of care that reaches beyond my own time. I think of the generations of women before me—those who scrubbed pots by firelight, who fetched water, who wiped the same table clean at the end of every long day. They may not have been praised for it, but their work made their houses homes, just as mine does now.

This is the work of a homemaker, of a mother, of a servant of God. It is the unseen liturgy of daily life, the quiet hymn of soap and water, of hands made weary yet willing. It is a small, steady offering, transforming ordinary tasks into acts of worship, turning simple chores into echoes of love. These small acts of faithfulness, repeated day after day, are a quiet offering—a way of sanctifying the ordinary, of making the home a place of peace. A place where love dwells not only in words, but in the work of our hands.

So each night, as I stand at the sink, I remind myself: There is dignity in this work. In the quiet, repetitive, unseen tasks that sustain a home. In the small, steady efforts that say to my family, You are worth this care.

And while I have embraced the beauty and dignity of doing the dishes by hand, I must confess—our new home on the homestead will have a dishwasher. A glorious, modern convenience that I will welcome with open arms and possibly even a happy tear or two. I imagine I will still find myself scrubbing the occasional pot or rinsing a stubborn baking dish, but I like to think of it as a well-earned reprieve—a small reward for all the nights spent standing at this tiny sink, finding grace in the soap suds. Because love—real, everyday love—is often found in the simplest of acts. And in this, I think, God smiles.

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Ps. My love, Derek, also does a LOT of the dishes in this home too! I wouldn’t be totally honest if I didn’t thank him for his service to our beautiful home in this piece too. He is my favorite dishwasher ❤️

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From the moment my son was born, I knew that his life was not just mine to hold, but God's to guide. He is a gift, entrusted to me for a time, and with every passing day, I learn what it means to love him while surrendering him to the One who knows him best. Even something as small as baby clothes reminds me that nothing stays the same for long, that growth is both beautiful and bittersweet, and that faith is trusting in the goodness of change.

When my son was born, even newborn clothes were too big for him. Though he was a perfectly healthy 7 pounds, 11 ounces, he was tiny, swimming in fabric meant for babies just a little bigger. Thankfully, I had been an over-preparer in pregnancy—something that has served me well. I had two preemie onesies, just in case. And so, for his first few days at home, we simply rotated between them: a soft grey footie with little dinosaurs and a yellow one patterned with tiny grey sharks.

My mother-in-law, upon learning of our clothes predicament, quietly stepped in. Without being asked, she arrived with an armful of preemie onesies, a gesture of love wrapped in the softest cotton. He only wore them for two weeks, but it didn’t matter. We were fully present, fully in love, lost in the exhaustion and wonder of those early days.

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