There was a time when getting dressed was a full day's effort. I was relearning how to move through the world again, and some days my strength ran out before the morning began. On the better days, I could make it down the stairs on my own—just far enough to lie on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon. And with each step I took, all my effort and brain power were spent focusing on balance- the type we’ve never thought about. The type that came effortlessly even to a toddler taking steps for the first time.
That was the year of Hallmark movies—an almost embarrassing number of them.
You know the ones. The charming little town. The beautiful scenery. Families and friends gathered around a table. Someone walking down a tree-lined street holding a cup of coffee as though there was nowhere else in the world they needed to be.
They were predictable, idealized, and probably a little unrealistic.
And I loved every minute of them.
I watched those movies because my soul needed joy. It needed possibility. It needed a little magic. Those lovely towns where everyone knew each other fed my soul exactly what it needed. And somewhere along the way, I found myself longing to be a part of them.
Things I had once considered completely ordinary had suddenly become extraordinary to me.
When your body stops allowing you to move through the world the way it once did, your definition of freedom changes. So does your definition of a good day.
There was a time when walking through a beautiful town with my family wouldn't have registered as particularly significant. It would have been a vacation. A nice afternoon. Maybe a few photographs I would eventually forget were sitting in my camera roll.
But from where I was then, those moments represented something entirely different.
They represented freedom. Movement. Family. Life continuing.
I would watch those movies and imagine myself walking again. Traveling again. Exploring somewhere new with my family. I didn't know exactly when—or even how—that version of life would return. I just knew how badly I wanted to be part of it again.
Years later, I found myself walking through one of those impossibly charming towns with my family—the kind that shut down at five and forced us inside to play chess and read books instead. Nature all around us. Nowhere we urgently needed to be. My husband and children beside me.
And somewhere in the middle of that very ordinary afternoon, I realized:
I'm living the scene I used to watch from the couch.
For a moment, I could almost see the distance between those two versions of myself—the woman on the sofa imagining this life and the woman now standing inside it.
It wasn't the town that made the moment extraordinary.
It was remembering the woman who once dreamed of being able to walk through it.
And maybe that's one of the strange things about getting what we once hoped for. Eventually, it becomes our normal. The thing we prayed for becomes Tuesday. The milestone becomes routine. The life we once imagined becomes simply our life—and if we're not paying attention, we can forget how extraordinary that is.
It makes me wonder how many parts of the lives we are living today were once things we hoped for, prayed for, worked toward—or simply assumed would always be available to us.
We spend so much of our lives dreaming about what comes next that it can be easy to overlook what has already arrived.
I still love my Hallmark moments. My children tease me about them, and maybe they always will.
But to me, they have come to represent something much bigger than charming towns and beautiful scenery.
They remind me that an extraordinary life isn't necessarily made extraordinary by extraordinary things.
Sometimes, living intentionally is simply paying close enough attention to recognize the ordinary moments we once would have passed right by—and understanding just how remarkable they really are.
What are you taking for granted today that an earlier version of you would have considered a dream?
August, 2026