Today marks one year that we’ve been in our new home.
This time last year, it was Holy Week, and I felt a little odd doing something that was customarily celebratory in nature during the most solemn time of the year. But at the same time, it didn’t feel quite celebratory. It felt more like relief- the kind that envelops you when you’ve been in labor for 20 hours and your exhausted body finally surrenders your baby.
It was also a hesitant- yet hopeful- surrendering of the previous three years to a solution I wasn’t quite sure was right. I could only celebrate the fact that my husband was sure. That he was leading us. That he had chosen, and that I was even willing to surrender to that. I celebrated the fact that here there would be no one threatening us, that my children were safe, and that I knew exactly where they’d be laying their heads to sleep in six months.
In this last year I have grieved and I have ached, and I have wept, yet I have laughed. The essence of our journey has taken its toll, yes. But there is beauty even in the darkness of our journey. In the breaking. In the bleeding. In the salty tears of heartache and betrayal and fear and angst.
And this past year has ceded to a slow, forward movement away from the bitterness and sadness of grief, toward a healing and wellness that only God’s grace can provide.
It's ever so small a movement, truly, but I feel it, and I see it:
It’s in the way I catch sight of the old me sometimes- the me that wasn’t always overwhelmed, the me that relished small hands constantly needing their mother, the one that had no concern for tomorrow or where my children would lay their heads at night, or which people in our life would still be there in the morning. I see small glimmers of the hopeful mind I used to have, filled with dreams and plans happily abandoned to the will of God. The one whose creative side found its voice in writing, baking, and painting old furniture.
And sometimes I even feel the joy that had always been entangled with the craziness of our life, and I know it isn’t the pretend happiness I was forced to build on quicksand.
True joy. Just there….Maybe a little bit further below the surface now, but definitely there.
I’ve been asked how I am still standing. How I can function. How I can move forward after everything we’ve been through. My answer is always the same: God’s grace. I have no abilities on my own. Everything I’ve been able to do these last few years, especially this past one, is because God, in His deep well of generosity, has given me what I have needed to stand, to put one foot in front of the other, and inch by inch, move. Move forward, deeper, further down the path which He set us on those long four years ago. His grace sustained us through so much loss, so much betrayal, so much hardship. Through the dark valleys. Through the storms. Through the unknowing.
God’s grace.
A month ago I bought this picture for our living room:
When I saw it in the store, something stirred quietly in the depths of my heart. Considering all that we had been through to find our home, and the fact that I was ever-aware of the light of God’s grace working even in the darkness, I knew that picture- the very last one, slightly hidden on the shelf- was meant for me.
Of course I know this life is not our true home. This fact has been especially profound in the course of this past year, and really in the overall journey of finding a home. But a house, a shelter, somewhere for us to live out our ordinary days, striving to love God and each other, a place from which to serve, a place to which my husband and working children may return at the end of a weary day- that is what we call home here in this life. That is where we little beings who are chasing after the Beatific Vision, who are just living and loving and growing our families, find the grace of God- tucked into the crevices of the painted walls, the messy floors, the coverlets we lay across our children at night.
That picture spoke of the grace which led me through one of the darkest valleys I’ve ever traversed in this life. Through that valley, to this little home we now call ours- here on the mountain which sings of His glory with every new sunrise God paints across her peaks, and whispers of His making all things new at each changing of the season.
It's been a whole year since grace has led us home.
God is so very good.
PS. I'd be remiss without a little shout to our realtor, Michelle Leo Hart, for being an angel in our story of finding home. She truly made the process so much brighter than it would have been, especially after the experience we had with someone else before her. She could never know how deeply grateful we are, and how much her guidance and patience felt like balm to our weary souls. If you live in the Central PA area and are looking for a new place to call home, connect with her! You won't regret it, I promise!
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