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...

I’m still under the covers. Eyes mostly closed. Brain not fully online yet. And I’ve got the Dwell app playing — daily Scripture and a short lesson.

It’s the easiest win of my whole day.

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:

Growth has a funny way of sneaking up on you — sometimes it’s the kind you go looking for, and sometimes it’s the kind that finds you anyway. 

This past year and a half have been full of both for me. And no matter how it shows up, forward growth is the easiest kind to recognize. It’s the promotion, the new skill, the milestone you finally hit, the visible personal development wins... and sometimes just getting through to face the next day. Those moments are worth celebrating — they’re the melody everyone can hear.

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...