What Makes a Home?

Our house closed.  It now belongs to someone else.  I thought I would feel weirder about that, but I don’t.  I feel overwhelming relief that this process of house-selling is over.  It exposed so many of my raw nerves– will they think it’s clean enough? What do you mean, they don’t like my paint?  They don’t like roses?– and had me on pins & needles for weeks.

We were very happy there, but it wasn’t the house that made us feel at home. It was the garden… it was small, but it was full of life.

It was the mornings, when we woke up and came downstairs to bask in the sunshine.

It was the celebrations we lived there.

It was the griefs we acknowledged and mourned there.

The applesauce we made there.

It was the friends and family who shared our lives there.

It was the baby we brought home to that house.

It was the messes we made there.

The runs we ran there…

And the snow forts we built there.

So here’s to a new, temporary home with my parents. To a new home in the winter. And here’s to the home we make together with the people God gives us to share our lives.