New House or Home?

Friends,

It has been quite some time since our little family has updated the blog...  and so, SO much has changed.  Not the least of which is the fact that we now live in Texas!  3 days before Bryce was born, Jonny was asked to take a position as the Lead Pastor at a great church in Ft. Worth Texas. (Trinity Chapel Bible Church)  So about three weeks after Bryce was born we sold our house, moved to Ft. Worth, bought a house sight unseen (huzzah for a good realtor!) and have been trying to settle in to life as a new family of five in a new house, new city, new job and new community.

We've been gone from Ohio for not even 2 months, yet everything has changed so drastically and quickly.  I am beginning to see what my grandmother means when she says, "Sometimes I feel as though I have lived many different lives..."  The very place that was once so strange and new to us had become home.  And yet, we are hopeful and thankful to be here.  While so much of our affection and love stays with the people and place we left, we are confident that this is where the Lord wants us now. 

For the first few weeks almost every time we would load into our van after being out running errands, sweet Nathan would ask, "Mom, new house or home?"  He wanted to know if we were going to our new house or if it was time to go home - back to Ohio.  (The whole permanency thing is totally lost on a 3 year old.)  He was trying to get his bearings, set his expectations.  Such an innocent question that articulated so much about how each of us has been feeling...  Somewhere along the way I started answering Nathan's question the best way I knew how... "New home, Nathan.  We are going to our new home."

There's a lot of new construction in the neighborhoods right around our "new home" and the kids have made a game of praying for friends from Ohio when they see certain types of construction trucks. Sometimes, just as the day begins to fade I quietly meander my way through those streets alone noticing the detail of the different houses and enjoying the beauty of them.  It's good for me to take these walks.  It's good to step out of the frenzy of trying to meet three little people's daily needs while also setting up all new medical, educational and social structures for each of them.  (OK.  Let's be honest - for 2 of them.  Bryce basically needs to eat, sleep and get smooched every waking second.  He's pretty low maintenance.)  As I have been walking I've been thinking about the process that goes in to each one of these new homes.  The thing about new homes is that they don't come free and they don't come cheap.  There's a cost to a new home and there's a story behind each one.   Somewhere along the line someone a vision for taking a field and turning it into a neighbrohood.  Someone spent long hours creating and refining a plan that would work.  Someone executed those plans and through their hard work and sweat equity they made good on the vision for the new homes.  And, in many ways, those new homes will, for a while, host the hopes, longings and dreams of the people who will inhabit them.   

In our neighborhoods, there are actually a lot of someone's doing all that work from the beginning to the end.  I have thought often though about a different Someone who is working even now preparing a New Home.  Someone who has looked not only at humanity as a whole but to me as an individual and said, "this girl needs a home."  Someone who is writing a story that will make even the most lusty readers and storytellers weep at it's beauty.  Someone who had a longing and vision for the relational richness and safety that could be ours if He were at the center of this home.  Someone who had a plan from the beginning to make a home for us and who paid with His own sweat equity.  Someone who made good on a plan that somehow beautifully and perfectly combines His longing for loving us with our own need and longing to know and love him.  Someone else is working harder than I ever can on a New Home that will not disappoint and will not fade.  He himself will be the cornerstone and the rich and fullness of that place will all be because of the relational connection to Him, because of Him and in Him.  I miss a lot about Ohio.  I love a lot about Texas.  But that New Home... that's what I'm hanging my hat on. 

Ok.  Enough of my ramblings... Here's what everyone really wants - pictures of the kids in our "new home" :)

Hard to believe this little guy is 3 months old!

A Fairy and "Generic Superhero"... Gotta love that pulling things out of the dress up bin still counts as a Halloween costume!

Bryce taking a selfie with his big sis

"I three.  I big boy now."