Finding Home -or- October, in General

Tap, Tap… Are You Still There?

I’ve totally abandoned you.  Forgive me.

Everything’s been a bit of a blur this past month with the cross-country move and all.  Tears, boxes, laughter, welcome home banners, and phone calls abound.  Life is beautiful and we are in Oregon now, resting comfortably in the arms and homes of family.

We arrived on Thursday, pulling the moving truck down my mother-in-law’s familiar street to spot a parade of banners and balloons, shouting relatives jumping up and down on the pavement, puddles of happy welcome-home tears.  What a way to return to our home state… like a regular prodigal party, it was.

Now we’re still up to here with the business of getting settled – kids enrolling in school, house hunting, living out of suitcases with the mess of our life crammed into a storage unit.  But in the midst of the chaos, there is total peace… a peace I haven’t experienced in quite awhile, a knowing deep that all is well and all will be well. 

But there is a happy anxiousness to it all, also.  Relevant is upon us, only 24 days left (think I should buy my plane ticket?) and lots of excitement at hosting a Southern Oregon (in)RL meetup this April.  We’re touring houses and searching Craigslist ads like wild people, trying to find home smack dab in the middle of what is all home, this big beautiful valley where our hearts have lived for a decade or more, now, even when our bodies were absent from this place.

We miss our boys and our dear friends in Texas, miss them so bad it leaves an empty space in us, but we are right where we should be now, and that feels like the best kind of gift from the God who is gracious enough to send us home.

Counting today, still numberless, but counting all the same…

-          Getting to Oregon in time for Fall, my favorite season of them all

-          Hopeful job interviews   

-          Stolen glimpses at rivers and lakes, each and every day, here

-          Confetti birthday cake

-          A weekend with mom

-          Kids starting back tomorrow in a familiar school, among friends

-          Unexpected blessings

-          Options galore

-          Ease of travel, no break-downs or crises, even across 5 days and 2500 miles

-          October, in general

-     Being home.