Home Sweet New Home

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. -Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

A few nights ago we slept in our new house. I woke up to the morning light streaming in through new $5 blinds and it just felt like home:

I haven’t written in a whole week…because there hasn’t been any time. We’ve been busy. Seriously busy. I still can’t believe how much we accomplished in just a few short days. On kind of a whim I decided that I wanted to be in our new house at the very first of this year. My mom was visiting and kept Boo entertained while Brett and I spent the last week finishing up projects, cleaning and painting.

I picked one color for the entire house…a light gray:

The entire month of December we had spent removing old radiator baseboard heaters…and they left a huge mess that needed to be patched in every single room…walls and floors:

There were three old heaters in the attic…all that weight is probably why there was a crack running through the ceiling. We recycled every piece of metal in the house and made a huge dent in a new furnace cost:

We fixed the plumbing in the house and added new floor joists where old ones had been cut and weakened:

And the new roof finally stopped all the leaking in the ceiling so we replaced drywall and patched those areas too:

Fast forward through all that to this past week: After selling off all our belongings in California we are basically starting from scratch (except for a gazillion books and boxes of art supplies). We don’t even own pots and pans. My mother gave us a few pieces of furniture that she had moved up from her house in Florida after my dad died. Our friend gave us a bed they didn’t want anymore, which is by far the nicest bed Brett and I have ever owned. I posted a photo on Facebook and Instagram and opened up a can of worms on whether or not it should be painted. Don’t worry it’s not painted…. yet:

We thought we would stay at the inn for at least a year but I’m like a river…I bend and turn constantly. Following the river’s path. We decided to go ahead and move from the inn since they are closed from now until April. I knew in my heart one night … as we drove up the long winding drive: no lights, no cars, the inn was quiet and dark and suddenly in a deep hibernation. It was going to be a very quiet winter up there for the three of us and I needed a little more space to work:

Me: So what do you like the most about the new house?
Boo: That I don’t have to share my bedroom with your books.

We were living in only 900 square feet and loved it but the best case scenario would have been to have a little more living area…which the new house has. We had started to move some belongings out of the cottage at the inn to make a little more space and we just kept moving and moving and decided it was right to just move it all. Move in. And we are extremely grateful to the entire Hemlock family for welcoming us in this past year. We got to experience behind the scenes at an inn, multiple weddings, and even the birth of their first granddaughter. Over ONE HUNDRED of you came to visit us at the inn and many of us still keep in touch. A few of you stopped me in the street just to say hi. I love that…meeting and putting names to faces. It was bittersweet leaving the little cottage we have called home for the past seven months. It seemed so empty when we left. Just a cottage again, not a home. And this past week I spent two days cleaning and painting to make sure we left the cottage better than we found it. Over the months we lived there we painted and caulked every single inch, cleared out the brush, planted grass, brought in gravel to make the driveway bigger and even installed a new septic system. That’s what we are taught right? To leave things better than we found them. If anything I hope we did our part in helping spread the word about this inn that marked my childhood so deeply and know will do the same for Boo. I love that little cottage…it definitely has one of the most beautiful views.

And then there’s the view from our new home. The first night at our new home felt just like that: home. For the first three nights we sat in the living room with the lights off and just watched the city lights below:

Phew. It’s been a lot of work. My whole body has been sore and I have bruises all over from “hard” labor. It feels good but I’m due for a day of rest I think. I didn’t think we’d be homeowners again so soon but this is the direction we’ve been led in…to these mountains. To our house on the hill.

Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with al it’s stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home. -Annie Dillard, Tinker at Pilgrim Creek

I love this town. I love our church. Brett has found work he loves (more on that later). I continue to write and create and attempt to make a living at it all. And we will forever be growing up and growing old. Last Sunday at church I had this deep feeling of knowing why I have said yes to so many different directions: each direction is a blessing. Now to keep listening to find what these blessings are to be used for. They will be used for something good, to tell a better story with our lives this year and to encourage others to do the same.

God, take my soul to that place, where I may speak without words. -Rumi

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