The other day I caught myself starting to get annoyed about something, and halfway through being annoyed, I stopped and thought, "Why am I spending energy on this?"That's when it hit me that something has changed...

I’ve had a few situations lately where I really wanted to defend myself… like, not just calmly explain, but jump up and say, “That’s not even close to true.” And, since I’m always honest with you, part of me doesn’t just want to set the record straight… I want people to realize how ridiculous it all is. I want instant redemption.But I've started thinking… if someone came at me like that... all loud and emotional, telling me I’m wrong... would that actually change my mind? Probably not. I’d shut down. Or get defensive. Or just think, “Wow… ooookaaaay.” (This has happened before and it didn’t exactly make me see their side.)That mini epiphany has me rethinking something else...

The other day I opened the cabinet to grab a bowl for dinner and noticed something I’ve apparently been ignoring for years. Right over there in my china compared are the "special" ones — the pretty bowls and plates that are part of a set of dishes my grandparents gave me. And without even thinking about it, I always grab one of the plain, practical bowls to use every day.That’s when the question hit me...

Life is short — and I don’t mean that in the cliché “Live, Laugh, Love” way that belongs on a distressed wooden sign at Hobby Lobby. I mean it in the way you feel it when life yanks the rug out from under you and the air feels too thin to breathe.It has been one year since Eric died.And in all the grief, the quiet moments, the ruminating I keep trying not to do, there’s this one truth that keeps coming back to me again and again:

I’ve always been someone who liked having a plan. Not a rigid, every-minute-mapped-out kind of plan—but a general sense of what was ahead, where we were headed, and what we were building toward. Especially in recent years, Eric and I had started dreaming about what life could look like once the busy years slowed down a bit.We thought we had time...