Dan and I arrived safely in Hershey (well, technically Hummelstown) last Wednesday evening and are happy to report that the move went well--with only two broken dishes. Since then, we have been consumed with the mission to rid our living space of cardboard boxes and to turn this building into our new home.
Even though there have been a few moments where I miss our tiny apartment in Philadelphia, I have to say that I love this new place. Our house sits on a quiet road where the loudest noises are birds chirping and neighbor dogs howling. This is a bit of a change from East Willow Grove Ave! The house also has a large yard, spots to plant flowers, a driveway, and a mailbox. I am especially excited about the latter two seeing as how Dan and I have had "on street parking" for most of our marriage and that, for the past two years, our mail would only sporadically arrive in the correct mailbox due to the number of apartments in the building. So, the ability to walk to the end of our driveway and find our mail, in our box, on a daily basis is quite the luxury! The inside of our house is also refreshing - a Kitchen with a pantry and plenty of counter space; a dining room able to fit a table that sits more than four people; a giant living room (in our standards); three bedrooms; a bathroom with an actual linen closet; and a full basement for storage and, yes, laundry!! Gone are the days of walking outside the house to get to the basement laundry room!!!
But even though we LOVE this new house, I can tell that it may take me a while to feel like we are home. Home, on earth, is place that is familiar, a place with memories, a place with relationships and the support of others, a place where you feel connected in many ways...this process of making a home will continue long after the cardboard boxes are unpacked and the flowers planted. But I know that this feeling of being home will eventually come because I believe that God has called us to make our home here for the time being. Yet, how funny it is that "home" can switch from place to place depending on the times and circumstances of our lives. It is never a fixed point--like on a game board--rather, it is rarely permanent. We can pack up, move cities, states or even countries away and forge new homes because there is a fixed point somewhere else--another home that we are tied to and called to walk towards. Our feeling of being home at a location here on earth is just a taste of what true home is and will never satisfy all our longings for connection and stability. Dan and I are building an earthly home here, for now, and I pray that we find that we are blessed with happy memories, relationships, and overall connections to this place. But, I also know that this is a point on a journey, on a walk; I can not have the expectation that this will satisfy all my longings for home because this isn't the home I was created for...it is the home I have been given for now - a home with Dan and a baby on the way and a house that I really, really like!!
(oh...and pictures are on the way!!)
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