Empty Rooms

May 13, 2026

A little note before you read this:

I wrote these words early Sunday morning, sitting in my son’s empty house just hours before my second granddaughter entered the world.

By the time you’re reading this, sweet Margot Jean is here, everyone is doing wonderfully, and our hearts somehow grew even bigger.

Welcome to the world, beautiful girl.

——

I’m writing this sitting on the stairway of my son’s now empty house with a cup of coffee in my hand.

No furniture.

No pictures on the walls.

No sounds except the occasional echo that only an empty home can make.

I’ve been sleeping here for the past week on a surprisingly comfortable blow-up mattress after they finally moved into their newly built home about five miles away.

Tomorrow morning, my second granddaughter will be born.

And somehow, sitting in this empty house this morn, I can feel every version of life that has happened here all at once.

I see my granddaughter Lilah Rose as a newborn the first time I walked through these doors after flying in from Florida. I can still see her little legs running down the hallway toward me every time I arrived after that.

I see my father here.

I see Cameron here.

I see laughter in the kitchen, freshly baked cakes on the island, game-day food on the couch, and ordinary moments that didn’t know they were sacred at the time.

This past week, while my son worked from home and my very pregnant daughter-in-love tried to survive the final stretch before delivery, I stayed back at the old house tying up loose ends. Mowing the lawn. Weeding gardens. Washing floors after the movers came through. Tidying what life leaves behind when one chapter closes and another begins.

And honestly, what a week it has been for them.

In just a handful of years, they have survived tremendous loss, career changes, building a home, moving homes, raising a toddler, preparing for another baby, and rebuilding plans more times than I think either of them expected life would require.

Even the move itself came with unexpected chaos.

Within the first 24 hours of settling into their brand new home, there was a water leak from the upstairs laundry area that ended up pouring through part of the ceiling below.

Suddenly we were all trying to trace where it started, soaking up water, moving quickly, calling the right people, and doing what families do in moments like that — figuring it out together in real time.

Thankfully, everything is going to be just fine.

And watching them navigate all of it with exhaustion, grace, and humor has reminded me of something I learned years ago when I was a young mother myself:

Most people have no idea how much strength ordinary families quietly carry.

There was a season after my divorce when I was doing everything I could to keep life together for my boys.

I worked everywhere. At a newspaper. At Geneva On The Lake. Singing in bands at night while trying to be home with them as much as possible during the day. I was exhausted all the time, but I never wanted my children to feel the weight of that.

A year earlier, I had briefly worked as a lead vocalist on a cruise ship. I remember someone once judging me after finding out my boys were only two and three years old back home.

It hurt.

Not long after that, management offered me a long-term contract with very good money attached to it. They said they could move my children to Florida.

I remember asking, When would I actually see them?

And the answer was essentially: between cruises.

Hours here and there.

I politely declined.

I remember quietly crying in the car on the way to the Orlando airport afterward, as “Comedown” from Bush serenaded the drive, staring hard out the window, knowing my life probably wouldn’t be easy financially after that decision.

But I also knew it was the right one.

And there were more hard moments.

One night at the grocery store, I was buying ingredients to make my boys dinner and came up less than a dollar short at the register. Embarrassed, I told the cashier I was going to check my car for change.

I knew there wasn’t any.

I remember holding my boys’ little hands walking through the parking lot trying to figure out how to make soup feel like enough for dinner.

When I came back inside, all of my groceries had been bagged and paid for.

The cashier smiled and told me the little old lady behind me had covered everything.

The only problem?

There was no little old lady behind me.

I would have noticed her.

Another time, I ran out of gas in downtown Seneca Falls while the boys were still very small. I stood there on the sidewalk holding both of their tiny hands trying not to panic.

A man appeared with a gas can and asked if I needed help.

I thanked him over and over.

I looked down for only a moment to reassure my babies that everything was okay.

And when I looked back up, the man, the truck, and the trailer he was towing were simply gone.

But my gas tank was full.

People can believe whatever they want about stories like that.

All I know is this:

God has always found me.

Not always early.

Not always the way I expected.

But always.

Even recently, standing in another uncertain moment, looking at $11 in my bank account while somehow still feeling genuinely happy, I remember laughing and looking up at the gorgeous sky saying out loud, Yet I have never been happier in my life!

An hour later, bookings came in through the strangest and most unexpected circumstances.

Again.

Provision.

Again.

A reminder.

Again.

Maybe that’s what motherhood has taught me more than anything else.

That love keeps showing up when we keep showing up.

That God loves us as we love our children.

That somehow we survive seasons we were certain would break us.

That empty rooms are rarely endings.

Most of the time, they are simply making space for what comes next.