Under the Arbor at The Threshold of a Garden of Hope

I have tried several times to write these last few days, and each time I stopped—because there has simply been too much arriving at once and not enough time. Life is full.

Birthdays.
Boxes.
Books.
Lessons from puppies.
Our humble family shop.
Christmas decorating this year.
Confessions.
Family.
Arbors.
Thresholds.
Gardens of hope.
New chapters.

Gratitude.
Mercy.
Joy.
Ache.

The kind of moments that don’t line up neatly, but ask to be held together with reverence and gratitude and in thanksgiving.

I want to write about the books that arrived on my doorstep—holding a chapter about my mom, Mary, and birthdays. I want to thank those who ordered online and those who stopped in this weekend to pick one up. This week has been a humbling reminder of how generously this work has been supported. Friends and readers ordering the book, Crowned With Grace, stopping by our home to visit the shop, buying gifts, even bringing cake because they know it has always been part of our story. This blog started on my dad’s first birthday in heaven—Writing is My Cake.

Our family room is filled with evidence that God continues to provide through people who show up. These are not small things. They are gifts. That family room where so much life was lived and lost has become a place where things are being made new. I am so thankful for all of it.

I want to write about my oldest’s milestone birthday—the one who made me a mom. About all she has overcome and worked through to get where she is. Hearing loss. Cochlear implant surgeries. Losing your dad. Broken relationships. About watching her thrive as she builds and runs her own business, and about the way she has stood by her siblings and by me in our hardest days. She is a selfless gift from God.

I want to write about the lessons I’ve learned training a new, energetic, very sweet and obedient puppy—about perseverance and discipline, unconditional love and resilience, and how necessary it is to have a soft place to land and a fence. And how sometimes a fence needs to be repaired little by little, rather than torn down all at once.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I found myself in confession. It was necessary—don’t we all need some grace.

Carrying more than I realized.
A difficult season.
Physical pain.
Grief that still finds its way out sideways.

I won’t share what belongs only between God and me, but I will say this: mercy met me there. Gently. Precisely.

One sentence the priest offered has stayed with me ever since.

“I want you to ask God every morning to show you one thing He is proud of you about.”

I wept.

He knew I needed to be seen in a very tender time—grief, transitions, holding so much alone (without Jon).

And then he said something else—something that felt like it reached straight into my heart and named it. He invited me to imagine what it must be like to be a mother who raised a son capable of loving a widow and her child.

Then, I realized he was talking about me. I wept more.

I am a widow. I know what it means to be cared for quietly, faithfully, without fanfare. I have seen how my son has shown up for me since losing his father. Scripture tells us that caring for the widow and her children is true religion. My fine young man of a son has lived this way toward me with compassion and love.

I hold that with humility, knowing I don’t own any of it. Whatever love has been formed, whatever goodness has endured, whatever faith has taken root—it is all God.

I want to write about the pain I have carried in my body for far too long, about learning when to rest and when to rehabilitate, and how even that suffering can become a place of prayer—offered up, united to the wounds of Christ, and used for His glory. Little by little, I am healing and getting stronger. I won’t give up.

I want to write about the journey of grief and walking with others in their grief and difficult journeys, and how, when we share our stories we can become a witness to others in their suffering and stand with them at a threshold that leads toward hope in their afflictions, in their anxieties and fears, in their ruptured relationships, in their loss and grief. I want to tell them, even as we grieve a tremendous loss, it is okay to hope for a future and find joy along the way. But we can’t do it alone.

Rebuilding a life that no longer includes the one you loved and lost does not erase love. It honors it.

heather Lebano

I want to write about stringing up Christmas lights and how grief can still hit sharply as you decorate for the holidays—the third holiday season without my husband . The memories come flooding back. About how choosing what gets put out and what stays packed away is not betrayal, but tenderness. About how rebuilding a life that no longer includes the one you loved and lost does not erase love—it honors it. It’s okay to use, hold, and decorate with only what fits now in this new life; not everything will fit. And my heart breaks that my husband and my son’s father is not here for this moment, but I have felt him close.

I want to write about timing. About thresholds. About rebuilding. About gardens and planting seeds of hope. About an arbor at the edge of a garden—weeded, seeded, and watered with tears of loss—becoming the place where a new chapter quietly opened at the beginning of Advent. About how God weaves stories together with golden threads, winks, and grace.

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” —Audrey Hepburn.

But for now, because life is busy and full and Christmas is around the corner and a 25th  birthday gathering is about to commence, what I really want to write about is this:

The way God writes our stories and magnificent chapters with stunning detail.
The way He heals our aches and gives peace beyond understanding.The way He uses people—messengers—to repair what has been broken.
The way we are invited to give our fiat and trust His will for however He desires us to be loved.

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

James 1:27

What I want to share most of all is how grateful—and quite tearful—I am that my son proposed to a beautiful young widow (and her young son), whom I have been blessed also to call my friend. A precious young woman who has held a special place in my heart since the moment we first met, and since I hugged her and kissed her infant son’s sweet forehead. Little did I know how the Lord would write this story, gathering and joining our families, we will now get to call our own. I simply love this family so much.

In this, all I can see is a generous, loving, and faithful Father holding and comforting a handful of fatherless so tenderly. May I always remember to hold this family with the same kind of tenderness and gratitude.

Beauty can rise from ashes. I know that now in ways I could never have imagined, and I see it in the quiet details that led to this moment—seeds planted long before we knew what would grow.

The holiday season, and moments like this, can be both joyful and deeply tender. Even when the world thinks we should only celebrate—and we do—we also hold space and remember with compassion all that it took to get here.

In time, I may share more. Perhaps it will become a chapter in the book I am writing, and the book God is writing in me. But for now, I am writing about the hope and future God is unfolding—right here at the arbor, the threshold of our Garden of Hope, where it all took place.

Congratulations, Ian and Mariana — and sweet baby. Your yes holds so much promise — a future being built with love, faith, and hope. What a gift it is to witness something so hopeful. May your shared life be rooted in love, strengthened by grace, and carried forward for generations to come.

And note: that sign kept falling down until I stood The Blessed Mother beside it. She will always be beside you, covering you in her mantle and holding you up.