home.

i am currently sitting in a hotel bed, somewhere between texas and idaho, missing jeremy (he flies out in 2 weeks!), watching my sweet kids sleep in the bed next to me. i’ve got lissa loo snuggled up beside me, wrapped in her unicorn blanket, and i feel like i’m finally taking a deep breath. a nice slow breath, i can’t even believe the whirlwind of the last little bit.

last summer, we went to oregon for the first time as a family. we had planned a beach trip with our friends to the coast and little did we know how much would change in the following year.

i guess it starts even before that honestly. it’s been a couple years that we’ve talked about being back in the west, we just didn’t know where. everytime we’d go, i was looking for that, this is it feel. as we traveled through colorado, utah, idaho, and arizona over the last couple years, none of them felt right. none of them hit me with the- this is home feeling. but as we traveled to the pnw last summer, we fell in love. we knew that was home.

it’s funny how god prepares us too. a few years ago, i was convinced i was never leaving texas! i love rockwall, the life we’ve built there. i love our first home we bought together, where we had our babies, watched them take their first steps, cried, laughed, struggled and grown and prayed together all these years. but something was missing for me and i just didn’t know what it was, so we prayed and prayed to be led to where god wanted us, our family, to be and who god wanted us to be with.

so last summer, we planned the summer road trip from texas to the pnw to utah to idaho and back home. it was a lot of driving haha but so worth it. we fell in love with the pnw. i felt like we’d found our home, our people, and what i’d felt was missing all those years. open space, trees, mountains, a yard bigger than our neat little manicured space in texas.

funny enough, we actually found our home last summer. we kinda stumbled on it, i can’t even remember all the details but as we stood in that space behind the house looking at the trees, listening to the creek, i felt home. that deep breath that says, this is it, i hear you, i got you. it was so hard for me pulling away from oregon last summer. waving goodbye to our friends, to this beautiful area that suddenly and unexpectedly had my heart. we spent time with family in utah and idaho and i loved that from oregon to family- it was only 1 day of driving. but as i then continued on to texas after, i kept thinking and talking with jeremy about how much i loved the pnw, that unexpected home feeling i had, and we prayed.

part of me thought for the next few months that i just remembered the highlights, i’d made that home i’d fallen in love with better in my mind than it actually was. so when we had a chance to plan a little weekend getaway, we jumped at the chance to go back, to see it again during the winter, not just during the golden summer time. and again, as I stood in that spot behind the house, i felt like i was home. i felt that deep breath of peace throughout me. again that same feeling of- i hear you, i know your heart, and this is home.

i stood and looked over that space and i could see where the kids would run, climb trees, get dirty, explore, make adventures, argue over something silly, figure it out and be off again. i could almost feel the coffee cup in my hand as i sat reading and writing on the deck, listening to that creek. i stood there, imagining our family, the people with us, and my heart was full. this was our home. this is where god had been preparing for us.

we didn’t know the timeline, when we’d move. jeremy’s office is here, our kids teams and our home and all the things. but each step we’ve taken, we’ve tried to be guided, to be open, to trust in his plan for our family. we still don’t know exactly how it all pans out but i trust that god will keep leading and guiding us. so for now, we will keep going in faith and taking it a day at a time. as it says in psalm 25:4-5 “show me the right path, o lord point out the road for me to follow. lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the god who saves me. all day long i put my hope in you.”