Joanna Gaines

One pretty amazing thing we learned early on was that the more time we spent together, the better our relationship was.

Whether you are in an eight-hundred-square-foot home or living in a dream house on a lake, contentment is found on the way.

That rotten houseboat turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

It__ hard to describe the feeling that comes with starting your own business. It really is so much work in the beginning that you lose yourself in it. You lose your sense of time, and you can__ believe how quickly the days go by because there__ no time to focus on much of anything else. But then you open the doors, and it__ like you__e given birth to this new thing that didn__ exist before. Then when it starts to flourish, well, that__ just icing on the cake. To get to see it live and breathe and to know that this thing you created out of thin air can put a smile on other people__ faces is such a blessing.

One thing I learned there on that beautiful front porch was if I wanted to be successful, if I wanted to do important work one day, I would have to increase my capacity. I had to learn to manage disappointment. I needed to learn how to make the most out of those __pportunities_ Chip seemed to keep finding.

Even locked doors can be unlocked in time.

It__ up to us to choose contentment and thankfulness now__nd to stop imagining that we have to have everything perfect before we__l be happy.

The reality is that old houses that were built a hundred years ago were built by actual craftsmen, people who were the best in the world at what they did. The little nuances in the woodwork, the framing of the doors, the built-in nooks, the windows__ll had been done by smart, talented people, and I quickly found that uncovering those details and all of that character made the house more inviting and more attractive and more alive.

Don__ quit, and don__ give up. The reward is just around the corner. And in times of doubt or times of joy, listen for that still, small voice. Know that God has been there from the beginning__nd he will be there until . . . The End.

I finally believed it was actually a beautiful thing to be unique and to be different.

How many of us take the time to relive half a lifetime__ worth of happy memories, cringeworthy failures, and unforgettable adventures together? How many of us get a chance to sit down and talk about the rough times we overcame in the past or to laugh about the stupid mistakes we made when we were young?