House and Home

Today, we bought a house.

The past week or so has been a little rough around here. There was a kink in the mortgage process and things were a little uncertain for four or five days. Which was really, really hard. I had started packing and then stopped because I just couldn't. I couldn't pack away the home we had when the home we hoped for might not happen. I've written about disappointment in house-hunting before, but when you are literally a week away from closing and something comes up? Ugh. I shed some tears.

But we got through it, and today's the day we signed the final papers. Now our bookshelves are slowly emptying (so many books!), I am gathering more boxes, and we may move as soon as this weekend.

(This is also why it's been a bit silent around here. First I was discouraged, then I was busy.)

We're gonna need a lot more boxes for all those books!

We had our walk-through for the new house yesterday. I hadn't been in it for more than a month. It's a little weird, the way "home" is building up around this place and yet ... "home" is still this apartment. Keith and I have lived here since getting married; Michael's been here his whole life. It will be weird to see our furniture in another place, along with all our other things, because they feel like they belong here.

I wanted to take pictures of all the rooms before packing, but instead found myself capturing corners, little places and gatherings of the things that hold meaning for our family. The owl cookie jar, a gift Keith gave me last birthday, sitting next to the plants on the kitchen counter; the kitchen Madonna standing amidst the teacups on the shelf above the sink; a sunny corner of our back porch where the rosemary plant sits by the fire escape.

I feel that being a homemaker can be such a challenge. We are called to keep our eyes on the next life, and yet as homemakers--wives and mothers--we are called to make that vision present in this life for our families, and we do that using tangible things. A home is so much more than the material, but the material matters. Material things communicate and make possible the rhythm of our life.

I know how we live here. I don't know what that looks like for our new home yet. So while I can picture cooking in the kitchen or the boys playing in the backyard, I still have trouble picturing the material aspects of "home" in the new house--our couches, my teacup collection, the kitchen Madonna near the sink. But I know that when we move and the Madonna is in her place, and owl cookie jar somewhere on the counter, they will soon feel like they belong there; that "home" will continue to spread over this house as it has already begun, and then slowly grow into it, sinking down roots, accumulating meaning and stories and love.

Soon Michael will wake up and we'll head over to the new place to do some cleaning, so maybe I will have pictures for you soon. :) In the meantime, have a Michael: