Sunday morning is quiet and dark. It's the last one of the year and church is taking a day off. There was one major dog-related casualty in the night, the guts of a Buzz Lightyear pillow spilled out over the whole of the office. And the house is empty, minus two.

I think I'm fairly good at goodbyes now, and when they depart two hours before sunrise, I give long hugs and trade I love yous, stand at the door and wave through steamed glass. Then Christmas is over, I get back in bed with the children. We go back to real life and spend the afternoon by the sea. After 9 days with them, I'm full and contented. But a day or two after I miss everyone all over again, all the people who did not come. I long for my sisters, miss the company of my nephews, wish I could send the kids with their aunts and uncles into the snow.

I remember a year ago, all stuffed into Matt's parents' house, weighing suitcases and driving ice-covered Wisconsin backroads. We had left home on our long way back home. We'd already lived two and a half years in the in-between, what was two more weeks, anyway? In the basement, we'd sit on our knees, sifting through our past and future, packing and repacking what would remain. Christmas was sweet, yet heavy. Time was both long and short. We were finally, blessedly moving on.

Today our home awakes. Most of us, anyway. Cocoa sleeps on her couch, exhausted by the early morning shenanigans. The children trade turns eating and playing, Beautiful Day plays on the radio (my favourite thing about Christian radio here is the prevalence of U2 on the playlist, even if the DJ speaks only in Irish this morning). Laundry and hoovering and one last piece of chocolate pie wait for me. We made it together, my grandma and me, here in my kitchen. In my house. In this country we now call home. She left pie and pictures and memories in her wake. A year of settling insanity, a giant cake of beautiful change, topped with the icing of family on Christmas morn.

The house is quiet, dark. Empty but full. I'll take it, 2013. I'll take it.

My "one word" for this year was HOME. And I think we made good on it, making home here. I've not yet got my word for 2014, weighing a couple in my mind and wondering what this next year could hold. Did you have a word for 2013? A resolution, a hope? How did it go?

These are a few (from 2013) :: In the shadows of someone's masterpiece

Oak Park is a dream. When I close my eyes and try to remember when, I realize the colour of the floorboards is gone. I can't find the smell of the bookshop. We moved away from those tree-lined streets 12 years ago and I find myself still wishing we could go back, sit in the park across from Hemingway's old place, my head in your lap and the church bells ringing.

We would ride our bikes on those streets, looking at these old victorian houses, the craftsman porches. You had your favourites and I had mine, and we envisioned this prairie life in the city, where we'd walk our children to school. Sit on the porch swing. Knock down some walls and plant a lilac bush. Open our own bookshop.

There were all these Frank Lloyd Wright places and we could never decide on one. You know, just in case. You liked the one with steep, sharp angles. I like the one with the rounded front door. These were our Sundays, spent in the shadows of someone's masterpiece.

Oh, we had so much time.



I think about it now, and what we thought growing up looked like, what success looked like. I sit here, today, coffee in hand by the kitchen door. I see the carrots popping up and the hydrangea sprouting new leaves and how our children prayed for a tree. Who'd have thought He'd give us so many trees we'd have to cut down a few just to make room? I watch as the yellow sun on our garden turns to grey and the rain comes in. I smile when I hear it on our skylight, I'm so glad I haven't put out the laundry yet.

It's not Oak Park, not the dream of those houses, not the porch swing, no Chicago skyline. There is no mortgage here, no deed. Frank Lloyd Wright never came to Ireland and I don't think Hemingway wrote from behind these windows.

But we have covered walls with paint swatches. You fret over the lino-wood flooring. The tree out front is in bloom. And we sit in the bay window, in our landlord's two leather chairs, king and queen of our own masterpiece.

Not the house, not the city, not the country, nothing but His design. 

I still cry over Oak Park, that we left and can't go back. I know it's all aglow in wistful unreality. I know we're changed and it's changed. I know these 10-plus moves in 10-plus years can really do a girl in. My homesickness is truly all over the map. But when you first brought me home a week after our wedding, with our quilt on the bed and the chest you built and your grandparents' old dresser, I didn't know I'd only ever want to live there. Frozen in time, forever. I didn't know that a dozen years later when I'd close my eyes, I'd still feel those floorboards beneath my feet.

And now that I can't see the colour, can't smell the books, can't remember what road that one house was on, I realize forever has changed. A dozen years from now, when I close my eyes, this is what I'll see: me at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, looking out on our back garden to the trees our children prayed for. 

Not the house, not the city. I will only see the masterpiece.

May 2013

***

These are a few of my favourite posts from this year, things I've written during this epic phase of resettling in Ireland. If you blog, leave me a comment below with a favourite post of yours from this year. Would love to read how you saw yourself and those around you in 2013.

We are gathered under His light :: at home in Ireland

Yesterday we took that wee trip to Lough Key, rain lashing down on us half the time; the other half scattered with sun. We listened to a Harry Potter book on tape, there and back, laughing at Stephen Fry's voice inflections, cheering for Ireland in the Quidditch World Cup.

The wee lad napped twice and the girl bought a pumpkin and the eldest decided hiking was a fun adventure after all. We also had a near-death experience on an old metal elevator, leaving me breathless and weak-kneed for the better part of an hour. We ate greasy food at an Irish fast-food joint and we raided a tidy little organic cafe in search of the loo. We ordered tea for two and mined stories from the kids: if they remembered our last visit, how Asher was only 8 months old, how Matt held the other two in the crook of a tree. Dusk comes fast this time of year and by the time we reached home at 6pm, the pitch blackness was overshadowed by a warm kitchen welcoming us back. Home. Back home.

And now as I write, a child is in the bath and one cleans his room and another one makes art projects she learned from a friend. It rains sideways, again, and the writing nook frames the oranges and reds and greens waving beyond our windows. The afternoon is mostly calm, gearing up for the Halloween rush and I'm just now able to sit back and watch... listen... as our life finds its rhythm.

Several weeks ago we read Jesus Calling to the kids. Life is an adventure with God, she hears Him say, and while anxiety and frustration and impatience lie in wait, we need only look for Him, listen for Him, to know that He is in it and with us all the while. There are no coincidences, only His orchestrations, or - as Andy Crouch calls it - full catastrophes, this beautiful dissonance of human existence.

For the children, and for us, it often goes unsaid and forgotten, misplaced in the chaos, hidden under school lunches and behind toy boxes. But in this month and the days of writing these words of home and life and power showers and tears in the McDonalds drive-thru, I see Him in it.

Familiar mums hold my place. A child curls up against the radiator. Matt off to work, dedicated to restoration. We revisit the places of our past, make memories for the future and open our doors for people to sit and eat and rest awhile. We place a pendant over the kitchen table and gather under it's light for dinner.

Today is the last day of our writing class and a man reads a poem they all know well. At the end of each stanza they recite the lines together, heads nodding in unison, laughing,

A pint of plain is your only man.

Can't you see Him in everything? 

 

Thank you for joining me in these 31 days at home in Ireland. 

Maybe you should come visit... I'll put the kettle on for you. Just in case.
But before I go, tell me: where do you see Him, in anything?

The imaginary life at home in Ireland

When it is midterm break, I write in the mornings. The children have creeped downstairs to watch a documentary on birds of the African air and the coffee is perfection. They feed, clothe and entertain themselves so I can sneak away to my pinterest-inspired nook and write a few words in the autumn sunrise. The burning bush out front is half-bare, undressing slowly each day, leaving its tiny red leaves like a tease from our front door.

Our house is a sanctuary, a tidy one. The only thing out of place is a creamy throw welcoming visitors as they sit on our sofa, which is not broken under the back left corner, nor is it pink velour covered with a fading blue-flowered brocade. It is deep and cushiony and I slipcovered it myself. The house smells of vanilla and cinnamon. The children eat fresh fruit under the pendant lamp. The bathrooms are clean and my bed no longer squeaks.

After a calm morning of writing (me) and reading (them), we walk in the tall shadows, collecting leaves and skipping ahead. No one cries over fear of bike-riding, no one fights over the Harry Potter DS game that has been bought and sold no less than three times between two siblings. No one has to go to the bathroom. No, no, we walk and walk under the always blue sky of Ireland. We find four leaf clovers without looking. And when we return home, we cuddle up under that same ivory throw and instagram our extreme Irish cuteness for far away friends to see. We all fit in the same frame at the same time and our smiles display the contendness we feel on our imaginary couch in our imaginary living room in the big house we own in a breathtakingly perfect country.

"Ow!"

That's me, waking up from the reverie. There has been some sort of lightsaber play up and down the stairs, and cheap plastic has hit delicate fingers and her squeal brings me back to life. This life. The one right here. Our burning bush is as it was above, but there is a bra on the floor by my unused sewing machine-turned-desk and a child standing next to me, "Mommy. Mommy. Mommy." I can't understand half the words he says and I worry for his speech development.

My coffee went cold 20 minutes ago and I'm too lazy to get some more (the coffee's cold downstairs, too, a hidden clue of the recent time change). The girl is in her room pouting. Laundry and rubbish await my arrival downstairs. The eldest appears to be missing.

We finished painting our bedroom and bathroom - an 8-month process - before the landlord comes to have a look at our power shower that's been out of service for five days. There is paint on the woodwork, on the floor and the baseboards, and I'm fearful he'll take out his white glove and chastise me. I told Matt last night, "I don't want to lose our deposit!" forgetting once again I want to "live here forever." How quickly we forget and fade back into our old ways of unpacking, living, packing and moving within a year's cycle. How temporary everything feels, as the leaves fall down and I'm so afraid to miss each one's descent, I cry at the thought of it. Autumn will be over so soon and even now darkness envelopes our house by the dinner-bell hour.

It's a mess and I'm still a mess, even though we are finally at home here. It is not perfect, and I'm frustrated more - by the kitchen counter, tapping my foot and making mental lists - than I'm content in the window seat, drinking from this same cup and reading in the sun. I've still not balanced the peace with the crazy. Don't think I ever will.

And yet, the four-year-old has made himself at home in our bed. Curled up in sheets that now match the duvet that now matches the walls, which now match the vision in our head. In the morning autumn light he laughs at me. And if nothing else in the house but the bed is a refuge for a wild child on this week off from school... if nothing else gets made and tidied but those sheets... if the house is a giant nest of chaos, reeds of toys and papers webbing in and through each nook and cranny, it still contains these five souls at its center. 

And we are not going anywhere.



Joining Heather at the Extraordinary Ordinary for Just Write. Join us.

Put the kettle on :: At home in Ireland

There are loads of awesome and amazing and totally spectacular things about the life we've chosen to live. New people, new families, adventures, fun, experiments, travel, joy, fellowship, meaning, love... literally long lists of awesome things. But in the other column, the one thing: no home.
July 2010

Just over three years ago, we squeezed our family of five into two bedrooms in suburban Kansas City. Longtime family friends were empty nesters, and they graciously offered to share their house with us. Two dressers, our clothes and a television were the only things of ours we moved in. Jack and Ella shared a double bed, Asher slept in our closet, and we called it home.

In hindsight, it was never going to be a long-term solution to our seemingly endless transitional phase. I was hoping, though, that if I sacrificed enough – giving up the idea and the longing for a place to call our own, saving money and living well below our means – God would put us on the fast track to where it was we really wanted to be.

When we realized that His ways are so high above our ways and He was not falling for any of that, and how we had chosen to be on this long obedience in the same direction, we moved out of those two rooms and into a 3-bed apartment. After those three months, Asher sleeping somewhere other than a closet seemed downright luxurious! We had a dining room, an exterior brick wall (what I always wanted!), most of our belongings (my dining room table! Matt’s pots and pans!) moved out of storage, and anything we didn’t have was donated by friends and family members and strangers.

Our newest new home was filled to the brim with God’s provisions. We thought we’d be there 9 months. We moved out exactly two years later.

Today, I walk Asher into his own bedroom, dry him off after a bath. The children do their homework at the table in our eat-in kitchen. After three years without, we plant herbs and flowers in our backyard, put up an old barn for Asher to play in. We’ve traded coin-fed laundry machines for a washer and a dryer (a true luxury!) and a tiny utility closet. The hallway doors open to the sitting room, the sitting room doors into the makeshift office and playroom, the office doors open to the hallway, and the children run circles through the whole of the first floor, up the stairs, in and out of their bedrooms, hiding in wardrobes. 

This house is not perfect. I hate honey-do lists, but we’ve got one with project after project laying in wait.  I love the big kitchen, but dislike the green tiles, the warped laminate floors. Our bedroom is quite small and the en suite is a vicious yellow. I often forget to turn on the immersion water heater, so our infrequent bubble baths are frequently cold. A bird talks to us from high above our gas fireplace (not the wood-burning one Matt was hoping for), dropping seeds and other paraphernalia for me to hoover (vacuum) up.

And we are forever renters, so the many things we’d like to change, we may never change. As long as we’ve got a bucket of paint, we’re OK with that. Our landlord is kind and we have room for friends. We can lock our doors and open our windows. We have made a home in a closet, and now we make a home for us all to nest with room to grow.

No house will ever be perfect, but our home is, wherever we may find it. And we have a good one here, just like the one before it, and the one before that, and every other place we’ve ever laid our frazzled heads.

This is just the start of the home tour this month. Many of the above items may be rehashed from time to time. If you can stick around awhile, I’ll put the kettle on.

At home in Ireland :: a oneword & 31 days mashup

Last week I did something I haven't done in years: I filled an entire school year's worth of diary dates. Each of the kids' schools sent home calendars and without any hesitation, I plotted each day, every early dismissal, all holiday breaks. Start to finish. We really are home and the long transition, it seems, is over.

Up until that calendar day, I hadn't intended on re-attempting The Nester's 31 Days series this year, but here I am: ready for another go. 2011 found us in 31 days of transition, and last year we were neck-deep in 31 days of messy parenting.

But this year... this year it's a whole new ballgame.

October marks 9 months of being back in Ireland and this year I've been trying to cultivate and establish our new home. So seeing as I've had a few months practice now and would like to finish my "one word" year off with a bang, this month we'll be:


We're not between houses and countries anymore. We are putting down our roots near the river -- the River Liffey, actually. We are parenting and working and friending and barbecueing and, well, living. I want to invite you into our home, sharing more about our neighbourhood and community, mothering here, shopping here, and just going about making our life and our home here. October in Ireland is brilliant, so there will be lots of photosharing, too!

So you know, just your average DIY/cultural analysis/house & home/travel-blog series.

Even with focusing on our new home here, I can't promise there won't be a day or two of homesickness scattered in. And I think I'd really like to do some sort of Q&A or Frequently Asked Questions about life as an expat in a new culture.

I would love for you to leave a comment with questions or thoughts, especially if you find yourself in a new place, home or season. And if you're joining the 31 days challenge, do post a link below and I'll follow along!

***

AT HOME IN IRELAND

day 1 :: a oneword & 31 days mashup
day 2 :: put the kettle on
day 3 :: our lass
day 4 :: five dublin-area destinations
day 5 :: the tables are filled with stories
day 6 :: sundays with the poets
day 7 :: fun quirks about irish homes
day 8 :: quirks i love about irish homes
day 9 :: wordless wednesday
day 10 :: of midwest moms and european fashion
day 11 :: five friday favourites
day 12 :: the flip side
day 13 :: sundays with the poets
day 14 :: in the garden where we mine our hearts
day 15 :: an outsider's observations on justice
day 16 :: irish movies
day 17 :: of kids' clubs and extracurricular activities
day 18 :: a primer on laundry, in five
day 20 :: sundays with the poets
day 21 :: the chipper
day 22 :: foodie for thought
day 23 :: wordless wednesday
day 24 :: the first time
day 25 :: torn in two
day 27 :: sundays with the poets
day 28 :: one last, sweet first
day 29 :: the imaginary life at home in ireland
day 30 :: day trips from our doorestep
day 31 :: we are all gathered under his light

I come home

My house is very quiet. With the wee three gone and Matt at work, it's just me and the washing machine. And I love it. I don't want to do anything with this time. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to clean, I don't want to read. I don't even want to write.

I just want to sit and listen to it. The quiet.

I'm taking long, deep breaths. My heart rate is resting. I hear the voice(s) in my head. I wait.

At some point the actual writing here will start up again. My fuzzy brain will empty out and new ideas and questions and words will flow again. But for right now, for today or this week or however long it takes, I sit in the silence of the reprieve. I come home.

The shadows of someone's masterpiece

Oak Park is a dream. When I close my eyes and try to remember when, I realize the colour of the floorboards is gone. I can't find the smell of the bookshop. We moved away from those tree-lined streets 12 years ago and I find myself still wishing we could go back, sit in the park across from Hemingway's old place, my head in your lap and the church bells ringing.

We would ride our bikes on those streets, looking at these old victorian houses, the craftsman porches. You had your favourites and I had mine, and we envisioned this prairie life in the city, where we'd walk our children to school. Sit on the porch swing. Knock down some walls and plant a lilac bush. Open our own bookshop.

There were all these Frank Lloyd Wright places and we could never decide on one. You know, just in case. You liked the one with steep, sharp angles. I like the one with the rounded front door. These were our Sundays, spent in the shadows of someone's masterpiece.

Oh, we had so much time.



I think about it now, and what we thought growing up looked like, what success looked like. I sit here, today, coffee in hand by the kitchen door. I see the carrots popping up and the hydrangea sprouting new leaves and how our children prayed for a tree. Who'd have thought He'd give us so many trees we'd have to cut down a few just to make room? I watch as the yellow sun on our garden turns to grey and the rain comes in. I smile when I hear it on our skylight, I'm so glad I haven't put out the laundry yet.

It's not Oak Park, not the dream of those houses, not the porch swing, no Chicago skyline. There is no mortgage here, no deed. Frank Lloyd Wright never came to Ireland and I don't think Hemingway wrote from behind these windows.

But we have covered walls with paint swatches. You fret over the lino-wood flooring. The tree out front is in bloom. And we sit in the bay window, in our landlord's two leather chairs, king and queen of our own masterpiece.

Not the house, not the city, not the country, nothing but His design. 

I still cry over Oak Park, that we left and can't go back. I know it's all aglow in wistful unreality. I know we're changed and it's changed. I know these 10-plus moves in 10-plus years can really do a girl in. My homesickness is truly all over the map. But when you first brought me home a week after our wedding, with our quilt on the bed and the chest you built and your grandparents' old dresser, I didn't know I'd only ever want to live there. Frozen in time, forever. I didn't know that a dozen years later when I'd close my eyes, I'd still feel those floorboards beneath my feet.

And now that I can't see the colour, can't smell the books, can't remember what road that one house was on, I realize forever has changed. A dozen years from now, when I close my eyes, this is what I'll see: me at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, looking out on our back garden to the trees our children prayed for. 

Not the house, not the city. I will only see the masterpiece.

Low budget writing nook

Since moving, my writing has been a bit... er... irregular. My trusty macbook fizzled nearly as soon as we landed on Irish soil (bad battery, bad charger, dying motherboard, etc.) and our desktop is stationed in our office/library/playroom, so it's been taken over by a 3 year old with an addiction to Netflix.

I had this vision for a place to write in the bay window of our bedroom, away from the bustle of the kitchen and the laundry, looking out on that one tiny mountain in the distance. But, you know, feeding the kids and getting car insurance and other such adult responsibilities take priority, so I sighed a lot. Pinned a lot of things. Made a very hefty to do list for Matt ("you know, whenever you can, no rush...(sigh)"). But tonight, a flurry of activity behind closed doors. And three children pulling me upstairs, "Close your eyes!" And voila, a writing nook.

1. Leftover piece of plywood
2. Old macbook resuscitated by a new cord charger.
3. Cuppa tea in my favourite Pride & Prejudice Penguin Books mug.
4. Cadbury Dairy Milk (mint crisp)
5. Thank you cards to be written
6. Matt's workshop sawhorses
7. Thrifted chair "borrowed" from the kitchen table.
8. Lovely view at dusk
Not pictured: Mood music courtesy of Sufjan, the man and three children who made it possible, and a whole lot of junk on the bed having just been moved from under the window to make space for a nook.

Sometimes, you just make do. Or rather, sometimes others will make something special out of seemingly nothing at all. Just for you.

My one word for this year is HOME, as in, we are making one. Here... again. Not just things, but a people and a place and a life. Do you have a word for this year? Or how are you learning to just make do?

Pinning with Karen {an update on my One Word}

It's a lazy day in our home. Matt is away, kids and I are having an Avengers marathon, and the snow that drowned Kansas City has finally made it's way across the ocean. I'm sad to report it's lost a lot of steam and seems to be dropping half-heartedly from the sky like it's given up after such an eventful week. Nonetheless, when a kid shouts, "It's snowing!" even if it's just a microscopic flake or two, we all feel a little festive.

And if you've noticed a round of silence on this here blog, it's because we are still neck-deep in moving, unpacking, cleaning, organizing and personalizing. Most rentals here come mostly furnished, so while we've got a lot of stuff to work with (wardrobes, pots and pans, mattresses), we've also got a lot of stuff to give away, sell, store and clean. Even though it is a rental, we're attempting to turn this bachelor pad of a house into a family home. And since we're on a tight budget, Pinterest and it's plethora of DIY goodies has become my late-night gal-pal.

A few of the gems I've found:

source

source

source

You know I'm not particularly crafty, and DIY stuff usually makes me break out in hives, but I've got a man who builds and a Pinterest board dedicated just to him:

I'm excited to make this house our home, to fill it with people and food and a cozy place to read. And to paint, too. Imma need to paint some stuff. Stat.

My one word for this year is HOME. It's not just about the house where we sleep, but also it's cultivating the people who inhabit it, especially me and my haughty heart. 

Did you pick a "one word" this year? How's it going?

After 40 days

I just can't tell you what it's like, after 40 days of displacement, to see your children running up stairs and down hallways. 

To trip over Thomas and his friend Clarabel, tracks winding from the sitting room to the kitchen, long packed away and now breathing fresh air with the wee lad who has inherited them. 

To give an after school snack to your eldest, the sliding glass doors to the back garden framing his sturdy head as he bends over homework, the green of shrubs reflecting off the glare in his specs. 

To peek in on the girl, sick from a cold, asleep in her own room, in her own bed, cuddled up to the hippo we left behind over two years ago.

They're all here, in our new home, breathing new life into these walls. Oh, we are cleaning mildew and a little concerned about the bird living in our chimney, and the toilets are a bit - how shall we say - wanting. 

But we are putting down roots. Replanting our trees by the river. 

And now, I must wash the hippo. And the bedding. And every surface. Because now, we are home.

What's underfoot in your house today? Toys, illness, homework or mold?

It doesn't snow in Ireland, and other lies I've told

At 2 am this morning, I had this brilliant idea and opening paragraph of a new post (the wee lad was awake and screaming due to some sort of tummy trouble). In the light of day and under the haze of little sleep, I don't have a clue as to what it was going to be about. But I'm pretty sure it would've been deep, awe-inspiring, witty and humble. You know, the usual.

We're ten days in now, only a handful of which we've managed to eat regular meals, and even fewer where we went to bed and woke up at proper intervals. And after months of telling our friends "It never snows in Ireland," we're on day two of occasional - blink and you miss it, so light you almost have to wish it to see it - snow. And as I put the period on that sentence, it picked right back up again, showing me how little I know about the weather, about Ireland, about God.

I stood in the woodchips of the playground, feeling those tiny white dippin' dots hit my face and crunch under my feet, the wind so fast and hard by the sea, and we all laughed. Only in Ireland would this be walking, playing, sightseeing weather. A month ago we would barely dare to brave the walk from our parked car in a suburban Target parking lot.

But things are different here. I could hide under the duvet in this holiday flat and wish away all the changes we face, the decisions we must make, the phone calls and emails we have to pursue to start again, again. In fact, maybe I did that for a day. It can be overwhelming, how long it takes to jump through the beaurocratic hoops of car insurance and visas and landlord references. But we've had a bit of practice with the waiting. And I've learned one can only hide for so long.

So I start the kettle and fill cereal bowls. We find scarfs and mittens and double up on layers. We face the stinging sea and we laugh... and sometimes, we cry. 

And we build a life again... again. We build a home.

Have you hid under the covers recently? 

a year at HOME

It's somewhat ironic that as I write this, we're off the grid. The home we built here in America - among our friends and family in Kansas City, squared in by coloured pencils on walls - has closed its doors. I hugged my mother in the parking lot of our apartment and said goodbye, again. We are living out of suitcases, many many suitcases, waiting to see where our home will be on the other side.

And I was thinking that maybe I needed a word this year, to keep me grounded in life and family and the winding journey God has placed before us. But with everything changing - not a single thing will be the same a week from now, apart from the five of us - how do i pick a word now?

But then I knew... and I think you do, too. You know what eludes me, what it is I'm looking for, what will stay the same, the challenge God has been giving me over and over with every new start. So my one word for 2013 is HOME. 

This year, starting even now in a cold Wisconsin living room and amidst the chaos of files and boxes and passports, creating home for our kids, for our marriage, for our work, for our new friends and neighbours, for the spirit of God within me and for the heart of Jesus where our home rests and waits for us. I still have so much to learn, to practice, to look for, to cultivate.



A year at home, what will that look like? Honestly, I don't have a clue!

***

Do you do New Year's resolutions, or have you one word for 2013? I'd love to hear about it!