A Forever Home

Yesterday culminated in some heavy disappointment regarding my idea of a forever home. 

Right now, we live in a beautiful home, but it’s not our forever home. In fact, we’ve already sold it and are renting back. In one and a half years we will move…again. My husband is a builder. I’ve moved something like eighteen times in seventeen years. It’s what we do: Built, live, sell, rent in the interim, then build again. I’ve never minded the lifestyle until now. Until now, I’ve loved driving around every weekend looking at property and planning what’s next. Thinking and hoping and wishing and praying, planning and dreaming, as the song says. Drawing floor plans on architects paper. Picking shower tile and fun back splashes. Maybe we’ll get land this time and start a farm! Maybe we’ll own a ranch! Perhaps we’ll be down-town people and walk to dinner every night!

Possibilities galore.

But I long for a permanent home. My oldest is nineteen. She’ll never be able to drive her future husband to a house, point and say, “this is where I grew up.” My son is fifteen this year. Even if we start building next year, we wouldn’t likely be into a house until he was seventeen. He’d have one year in our “family forever home.” That’s not really what I was going for.

It’s not the worst thing, I know. There are fun perks to the way we’ve lived. I’ve lived in so many homes. Old homes, new homes, small homes, big homes, farm homes, and gorgeous magazine homes. I’ve lived in enough homes to know I don’t like large glass showers or huge vaulted ceilings, no matter how pretty they photograph. I’ve lived in enough homes to understand I prefer some land to tight neighborhoods. More homes have taught me more about my preferences. But I don’t want to live in more homes. 

I want to settle somewhere. Mark up the doorways with the kids heights and see a snowball bush I planted mature for once. 

I lived in a home we called Anglers for a whopping five years and I still drive by just to look at the huge snowball bush I planted in the front yard as a young twenty something.

Anglers

I wonder all the time what my life would have been like had we stayed there. It was a dated early 90’s house when we bought it, with green, marbled Irish Spring bathroom countertops, brass faucets and fixtures, and a slate entry. And despite the unfortunate finish choices, I loved it. I mean, I absolutely loved it. It was central to town, at the end of a cul-de-sac, on the top of a hill, with amazing South Valley views. Most people who buy here want views of the mountain. But I want South Valley every time. Jeremy built a pergola and fire pit and a wooden swing set out front. We expanded the deck. There was a boulder next to the deck that the kids named “Rocky.” We had Christmas parties there, and baby showers. The living room was so spacious that some years we set the Christmas tree up right in the middle of the room. I hosted “cake night” at Anglers where I’d make a different cake every month for a whole year and invite everyone over after dinner to sample. I still remember January’s was lemon cake. 

Christmas tree in the middle of the space

Parties + entertaining

View from the deck. What home feels like.

Moving from Anglers the first time. We moved from this house twice if you can believe it.

We lost Anglers in the last housing crash. If it hadn’t been for that, I think we’d still be there. The day we moved out of that house, as we were cleaning trim and carpets for the last time, my body started a miscarriage. It was a losing day. 

I haven’t had a home home since Anglers. That was over nine years ago. We came close once. In 2016, I thought we had bought our forever home when we remodeled the 1902 farmhouse on RCR 131. But it wasn’t meant to be. 

It’s not Anglers I long for—although I might be tempted to scoop it up if it came back on the market—but rather, I’m after the feeling Anglers gave me. I’m after my memories being all in one spot. To know the Christmas tree always goes here. The annual party was always there. I cried on those stairs, I drank my coffee in that spot for decades, with that view. I want to walk out and say “my snowball bush is huge now.” 

Recently, all the doors I open in an effort to find my forever home have slammed shut. In the old days, we used to just put an offer on some property and you’d get it or not. Most of the time, we’d get it. But that’s not how it’s been working. Homes have been contingent, or pulled from the market after we make an offer. They have first rights of refusal and are tangled in legal proceedings, leaving our fate and position unknown for months and months, or they’re much too expensive now even though just one year ago they weren’t. 

I can’t secure the home I desperately want even though it seems I should be able. Lord knows we’ve bought homes many times before.

When you can’t make happen the things you once could, for reasons that are baffling, I have to recognize God’s hand. But I don’t know why he wouldn’t want me to have a home. 

I don’t know if He’s preventing it from happening or if the market is just crazy, or both. I don’t know if I’m supposed to keep pursuing or let it go. Each seems wrong. Each seems right.

I’m in an in-between place. I can make nothing happen of my own effort and I can no sooner stop searching for home. The next move, after all, is inevitable. Whether it’s a permanent move or an interim remains to be seen. And it feels as though I have no control over the matter. And that feels disappointing and confusing. 

The loss I’m experiencing this week is a first world loss. I know that. But it’s still a loss. A personal loss of something I’ve wanted and have been working toward for a long time.

Last week, I thought I might have found the home. The place where we’d settle—maybe. But then an appraisal came back far higher than expected, and with it, any hope of another property in that area. The same day I found that out, my plan B—the property I had been keeping in my back pocket—the one I said I’d move to and settle in if I couldn’t make plan A work—went under contract. 

The same day. 

And I’m not sure if that’s a sad thing or a blessing. All I know is that I’m left without control or options again. I’m left in the in-between again with God whispering “but can you make a home here? Right where you are?” And me saying “well yeah, but I have to move eventually” and Him saying back “and you will” without any hint as to where that might be or for how long. With nothing to plan for or dream about or work toward, I’m left with what is. Which is a lot, actually. A ridiculous bounty, to be sure. I know that. And so when I remember that I have everything I actually need, I pray:

God, 

Give me grace in this in-between space. Help me let go of everything that is not mine. Help me want you, your kingdom, and your will for my life above what I want. Lead my spirit to praise and worship in the middle of disappointment. Create in me a content heart right where I’m at with the knowledge that home is your specialty. You’re leading us all there, after all. Help me to trust in your goodness and plan for my life whatever it looks like. And God, help me remember this tomorrow and the next day and the next day, because we all know I’m going to forget. I’m so devastatingly human like that. 

Amen.

And God? I’m sorry for being so embarrassing about this and taking so long to get here. But you did create us for a forever home, so I do feel you should take some responsibility.

Dear reader, I assume we’re allowed to joke with God, right?