Do you know who I am?

An inside joke between me and my dad. Only he's not in on the joke.

Hey y'all! I'm not from the south, although I always get asked if I am... I'm Amy and I'm glad you're here with me. Quality time is my love language, so you journeying with me truly does mean the world to me. Let me tell you who I am. I'm a talker. I can talk to a light pole for hours if it'll listen. I'll try to keep it light and fun. But I do apologize in advance if I go off on a tangent. Here we go friends!

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Almost daily I get put up on this pedestal. And daily I climb down off of it. Because I get asked through and through where my faith comes from or how I can be “as cool as a cucumber” while the world is spinning out all around me. My answer to those questions are: “honestly? I have no idea.”

I feel like people look up to me way more than they should. They tell me that they wish that they had faith like I do or they tell me how patient and kind I am and they declare that they could never do what I do. But the truth is, that without Christ, I couldn't either. My daughter coined the phrase, trash person. And that's what I used to be. A trash person.

I would love to tell you that I had found some magical formula that would help you be a better version of yourself. But the truth is that I just live. I seek out the small joys each day. And when I look back over those tiny things, I find that they made it all very beautiful. Even the bad days can be turned around into something magical, if only you'll allow yourself to believe. (This coming from a total sceptic.)

I can’t tell you how to make your life better. But my prayer for you is that by chatting over coffee or a meal or a playdate, that you would be inspired to seek your own way of living, casually detached from the chaos. That you would see just how easy it is to see peace in a puddle or find yourself in Heaven on earth when you take a wrong turn and find yourself in a magical rain forest (literally happened to me). I will get down and dirty and I'll tell you who I really was and who I really am now. They are two completely different people. A new creation in Christ sometimes feels like an understatement.

Who I am now

I am a mother of four great kiddos! Although, they are not all kids anymore. My boys, Anthony (20), and Tribiani (17). And my two lovely daughters, Aniston (10) and Tatum (8). I may have 20 years of experience raising children, both boys and girls, but trust me when I say that I am no more of an expert on parenthood today than I was 20 years ago. Each kid is so different. And what you can say about one of them, you definitely can not say about the other. But We are figuring it out as we go. Especially now that I am divorced after 17 years. I am learning to navigate this life without the man that I thought I would spend the rest of my days with.

I have a running joke with myself, that I am more of a man than most men that I know. It's true. I Don’t think like most women I know. I don’t act like them either. But despite my extreme tomboy tendencies, I am a woman. You’ll find that, like most women, I tend to go off on a tangent. Getting lost in the little details and time traveling back and forth through my stories. But they all intertwine pretty seamlessly (I'll try not to leave you in a dark alley somewhere).

I am the type of person that if you need me to speak publicly for 30 minutes, you had better tell me that I only have 15-20 because I will inevitably go over my allotment. And rest assured, I will ignore the flashing light from the dark corner, signaling the end of my time. If you ever get a chance, go a head and ask my mom what a rebel I can be. And how I despise rules and regulations.

You won’t get fashion tips or makeup tricks from me or the latest gossip. I steer far away from those things. The most important things in my life are my faith and my relationship with my savior. And close behind are my kids and then cooking of course. But in between all of the most important things are a million little things that mean the world to me as well. I love very deeply and it's not uncommon for me to cry when I see joy in my children's faces.

So, why don’t you take a long walk with me as I share my experiences, my joys, my fears, my successes and failures and maybe a few recipes. Hopefully you, like many of my friends, will be able to pick up a few little nuggets along the way. And I honestly pray that I will get to connect to you as well and pick up a few nuggets myself.