Some nights

when the house is finally quiet

and the dishes dry in their rack like resting hands, I sit with the woman I was that day and ask her gently —Did you love them well?

I replay the moments like my favorite song as a teenager

The sharpness in my voice

when patience ran thin.

The sigh I meant to swallow

The way exhaustion wrapped around my shoulders like something heavier than it needed to be

I want softer edges

I want my children to remember warmth before they remember rules

I want my husband to feel chosen even on the ordinary Tuesdays when the house had a tornado run through it and my hair is 3 weeks past needing to be recolored and when love looks less like fireworks and more like folded laundry

There is a version of me who, wakes earlier, speaks kinder, moves slower through frustration and she listens without defending 

She forgives without keeping score and she breathes before she reacts

I am reaching for her! 

Not because I am failing —but because I know there is more grace in me than I sometimes allow

I am forever learning that becoming better

is not loud or graceful all the time, it is quiet correction

It is apology at the kitchen table

It is choosing tenderness when pride wants the last word

I may never arrive polished and perfect, but tonight, in this stillness, I promise to try again tomorrow — to love more deliberately, to speak more gently, to hold my family like something sacred placed carefully in my hands.

And maybe that trying —that constant, hopeful reaching —is already the beginning of the becoming