Thankful for Home

Up to this point, I never really owned anything other than student loan debt ;).  Though we don't fully own our house yet, it is in our name and we didn't need a co-signer to buy our home, unlike with student loans (Yay! We're growing up! :).  I don't remember the details of the papers we signed over a month ago, but I remember the feeling of relief I experienced when I unpacked the last box and actually got to throw it away.

The truth is, I've never really had a place to call home.  All the moving I did throughout my life probably contributed to that feeling.  I've lived in a lot of buildings, but this place we're living in now has become more than that in just a few weeks.

We got to pick out the lot that we wanted; we were here when there was just a cement block above a pile of dirt; we got to see the bones of this house go up, the framing and the windows.  At times it felt like it would never be completed.  I remember the anticipation I experienced before meeting my husband, before getting pregnant, before going to college... always waiting and waiting; it felt a lot like that.

Growing up, I knew what I wanted but I hadn't seen it in many places, and that's the other reason why I never had a place to call home.  I wanted to know what it felt like to feel secure, and to be able to exhale and just be.  I wanted that for myself and I wanted it for the children I wasn't even sure I'd be able to physically have.  I wanted to create that atmosphere with the kind of husband I wasn't even sure existed.  Home was an idea that felt distant and unrealistic.

There are a lot of things we do to interfere with our greatest hopes, consciously or not, because sometimes they are rooted in our deepest fears.  I have been blessed with a place where I can breathe easy and feel secure, a home, because of the people that live between these walls with me. But in the same way that a building wears over time if we don't invest in it, a home cannot be abandoned once it's been unpacked, figuratively speaking.  We made it here because we were brought here together, after overcoming obstacles apart, but to keep this house a home we need to overcome our daily obstacles together, so that we don't slowly grow apart.  My greatest fear is unoriginal: I don't want to lose the ones I love most.  God brought them to me, and he's the one I need to depend on daily to keep them here.

I hope my children stay close forever.  I know they will go their own way.  Maybe they'll go to school out of state, or study abroad, or travel, but I hope that they always feel at home where we are.  If we depend on ourselves alone, though, we will fail by default because it's human to repeat cycles.  A house only remains a home when the foundation is unconditional love, built on the one whose love for us never changes even when our lives and situations do.  That's the kind of place we all need to come home to.