Becoming Home

The contents of our own family ledger would not be so special if we knew what the future held. Little by little the present slips into the past and the memories that pieced together our everyday life become precious – because that life is no longer.

Hudson and I moved into our first home in May. I woke up early that first morning still feeling like a stranger in its walls. Our family ledger sat on the coffee table. I flipped through the pages.

Our one bedroom apartment in Fort Worth - a community of relationships built from strangers one short year ago – the start of married life. I felt the present become the past. It’s a strange feeling.

With gratitude and sweet memories of the past year I turned to the next blank page. I sketched a little picture of our home and wrote this down:

“Waking up in our new home! Biscuit couldn’t decide where to sleep last night but he’s warming up the place. Hud and I are drinking coffee looking out at the cypress across the street, making a list of the random items we need. Oh, the joys of our first home – trying to soak it all in.”

I shared on Instagram that it felt a bit more like home in that moment.

I am learning to hold a loose grip on the beautiful moments in my life. Not in a way that does not honor each moment, but in a manner that allows the beauty to flow into the next scene. Finding gratitude in the moment is a way of living modeled to me by my family. I look to my mother as my youngest sibling prepares to leave for college out-of-state. How must she feel as life transitions yet again...

I still struggle with placing emphasis on the future. I can become wrapped up in the things to come. I hold a constant fear that in one year we will have to pick up and move again. But I learn through my mistakes and our ledger reminds me of God’s glorious love and promises in this life.

Right now I sit in a little nook in my sunroom and listen to the rain. I realize in this moment we have been in this new home in Baton Rouge for one month. We are not strangers here anymore. My entry from April 29 slips into the past and I think fondly of that morning sitting in the sunlight that seemed so new.