We Are Not Polished. We Are Proven.
If there were an award for “Most Inconvenient Time to Move,”
I would win it.
We moved between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Six kids’ worth of life — plus my own — boxed and dragged through the busiest, loudest, and most emotionally exhausting season of the year.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m a glutton for punishment or simply committed to choosing the hardest road available.
The jury is still deliberating.
But stay with me.
I traded square footage and a pool I didn’t want to maintain for a yard, convenience… and hardwood floors that creak when you step just right.
At first, I wasn’t convinced.
The house we left was shiny and new. This one was built in the 1800s.
One was a blank slate. The other held stories beneath layers of paint.
Who has stood at these windows?
Whose hands have trailed along the banister?
What grief or laughter settled into these walls?
And yet —
in only a few months here — I have felt more peace than I have in years.
The beauty isn’t polished. It was painted on for curb appeal. The doors still whisper old colors beneath the surface.
And I have come to see myself in that.
Aging.
Cracking.
Peeling in quantities no one warned me about.
Imperfections softened by foundation —until it turns treacherous and settles into the lines it was meant to disguise.
Looking at this house reminds me:
beauty deepens with what it survives.
We are taught to stay polished. To remain the flower — to be admired, untouched by time.
But wrinkles prevail.
Bones creak beneath pretty dresses.
Hair thins.
Skin folds in ways we expected but weren’t ready to greet.
This old house sits surrounded by new construction — sleek, open, impressive.
Where I once saw the difference as a flaw, I now see beauty and strength in its stories.
It has withstood every hurricane, every catastrophe this coast has known since the 1800s.
Its bones are proven to be sturdy.
It may not have an open floor plan, but it is a fortress. Unshakable in its foundation.
Sure of its footing.
The narrow doorways even keep my son from running circles around the house —an unexpected architectural mercy.
That kind of steadiness cannot be installed.
It is earned.
Built by surviving what was meant to destroy. Stone by stone.
And that is true of us.
We have all weathered storms we never saw coming. We have found strength only desperation reveals. We have earned our years — stone by heavy stone.
We have been brought to our knees. Stripped of ornament. Left bare.
And still, we rise.
As age inevitably takes us, we are not polished. We are proven. And what we rebuild from the ash of what tried to undo us is deeper, stronger, and more beautiful than anything that ever relied on paint alone.
With You in the Weathering,
Emily
Ash and Bloom