A Life More Ordinary: This Is Home

Monday, July 31, 2017

This Is Home

The last time we chatted I told you about our hearts. How they were tired and weary and all sorts of frustrated. But they were soft. Soft hearts. I think that's the only way to get through life these days. You can't always control what happens to you, but you can keep your heart soft, not hardened and detached. Oh, but it can be so difficult.

Today, my heart is so joyful... We finally, finally have a home.

Someday, if you ever want to hear a very beautiful story with a very happy ending, I will tell you about how God told us a long time ago that the story of our next house would be miraculous. And, oh my heart, it has been. Yes, the circumstances of our new home, quite literally, is nothing short of a miracle. But, more importantly, what has happened inside us throughout the process of finding and procuring this home, well, that's the true miracle.

Nearly a year ago, I talked about what Home meant to us, after almost losing a husband, everything had a new meaning. And I read those words with entirely new meaning. Now, a full year later, my heart is no less blessed by the beautiful tune of Blue October, but it is now full to overflowing with the words of This Is Home by Switchfoot.

So let me tell you, our hearts for as long as we can remember have been acreage... It is the one thing that we felt we couldn't settle on, based on what we'd felt God has for us. There are so very many reasons for this, but I won't delve too deeply into this just right now. I'll just say, if you haven't house-hunted recently, just to get you up to speed, to find acreage in the Twin Cities is not only difficult (read: pert near impossible), but to try and find something that 1) wasn't one million miles away from our families and friends, 2) wasn't on a super fast country road, and 3) didn't have something reaaallly wrong with it, well, that alone is pretty much a miracle!

So, here on our 4.6 acres, in West Lakeland Township (that's right folks, we literally do not even have a city, officially "country folk"), we have neighbors with chickens, tractors, and even a few horses, and I finally feel home.

And while we've found our dream house, it has been equally important to remember that this does not define our joy. In fact, the first few weeks here have been pretty tough, but we were deeply strengthened in our journey to get this home, and felt more prepared to undertake a bit of a hard season with adjustments and cranky children and lots and lots and looooots of unpacking. No, seriously, why do we have so much stuff? But really, it truly drives home the point that your circumstances do not define your joy, and we intend to continue on in hot pursuit of what God has called us to do in and with this home!

For those of you following our journey, I posted a few pictures below. Clearly there are none of the inside because obviously it is basically a disaster zone. Some day it will be clean AND unpacked, but probably not until my children are 25 and not living in our home. Maybe.

The front of our lovely home (I promise that the pods are gone now :))