Sharing the progress of the home we are building has been a lot of fun. I've been asked more than once if "this" home will be our forever home. What an interesting question.
One of the messages written on the studs of our home.
Recently, Sam and I have been needing to figure out some complications regarding the loan for this house. The income he makes for his new business will not count toward our loan payment for another year. Which makes getting a loan now more challenging. We are having to sit in trust that the answer will arrive - if indeed this home is meant to be ours.
Whoa - that has been an unsettling and quite challenging though to endure. Open hands and open heart to the actual next steps falling into place - even as we spend hours and hours investing labor, love and of course visions of what it will be like to actually live in that space. To sit on that deck. Oh I hope that home is to be mine.
And yet. This home is not our forever home. We know that. We have really a maximum of about 60 more years of life on this earth. That is most definitely not forever.
Yes - I would like to raise my children in this home. I would like to honor their wishes that we not move again once we move into that home. But I know that my life is mobile and that only God is constant.
Attachment to things - even incredible things like homes built with our own hands - is not the promise that God offers. The promise is that God is with us. God is constant. God is the gift to which we need to attach our hearts, minds and souls.
Not a home.
Not a human.
Not a dream.
God alone is our promise.
Last night, I talked this through with my roommate Sarah. I told her I've been thinking about this for the last two weeks. I once had a home that I claimed would be my forever home. I was all in - for that house, that neighborhood, that school. I cherished the gifts - to the point I couldn't actually perceive that parts of that created life were broken and damaged and unhealthy. We visited our old neighborhood over spring break. The girls asked again,
"Why did we move." My answer in the past has been vague. Generalized. "We wanted to live closer to the trails. You go to a different school. We found that property and liked it." Last week, I realized they needed more.
Moving is one of the most stressful events on a child's life. Our decision was not made lightly or vaguely. We knew that living in that house and that neighborhood was no longer a healthy choice for me.
The triggers I experienced in that home were varied and layered. I was having to drive across town every day to support my mental health - hiking and biking on the desert trails provided relief and healing balm. Some days it was tough to get there because of the distance and drive time alongside the pressing needs for healing. Sometimes a trigger would cause so much regression I had a hard time being the person I wanted to be.
That home was beautiful and incredible. Our neighbors were fantastic. And I needed something different to help me stay mentally well.
We found this property. It's borders surrounded by the land upon which I spend time walking and talking with God. Where the fresh air refreshes. Where I could step outside and be in my healing place. And we moved on it. It's been a two year process. We want to live in that house.
We have been longing to live in that house.
Maybe a taste of the longing we have for our actual forever home. A longing that will not be satisfied by even the most perfect spot on Earth.
A longing that will only be satisfied when we are seated at the table in Heaven. Because dear friends - that is where our forever home will be found
- not on earth - but in heaven.
Yet while we live here...
Let us live and create on earth as it is in heaven.
This home. This beautiful home. It's not even ours. Not really. It belongs to God, and we will take each next step to finish it and figure out the loan. And we will hold our hands open for God to use this home and our very lives in the way that best serve's God's kingdom.
