At Home

Our current backyard.

Almost exactly 9 years ago, Evan and I drove around Houston in a rental car with our not-yet-two-year-old firstborn sweating in her big car seat in the back seat. Evan was in the midst of revising his dissertation and was looking forward to his first year as a university professor, but we had taken a few days in order to travel to our new home town to find housing. It was not going well. I cried as we drove down Westheimer. If you have driven down this massively long street in Houston, you perhaps understand why. Six to eight-lanes wide, it is nevertheless congested. Businesses, strip malls, and huge apartment complexes string one after another. Having most recently lived in the much smaller town of Waco, I felt overwhelmed by the vast, busy impersonality of Houston. How could our family of three ever be at home here?

Entry of the first house we owned. Diaper bag. Library books. Little girl and baby shoes. You can tell a lot from this picture!

Those were good days. We called our formal living room the "music room."

But we did find a home and--more importantly--we learned to be at home here. Both have been a long process, though. We first lived in a little rented house in Sugar Land, but that became too expensive when we faced big bills from a medical crisis just a few months after moving. So we found a house in foreclosure in an inexpensive part of Houston. We worked on that house a lot while we lived in it. And I really liked what that house became. It was cozy and easy to live in and close to everything. But the suburbs were calling our name. We moved to Sugar Land five years ago, and I've loved living here. We moved to Houston as a family of three. We moved to Sugar Land while I was expecting our third child. We have since welcomed our fourth child. And we have done even more work on this house than our previous one. (I had no idea that we would spend so much of our time just working on houses!) Of course, we have never liked the Texas summers, and have spent as much as possible of those hot months with our families in San Diego. But we have learned to appreciate and even love so much about our chosen home town.

Since that teary drive down Westheimer, our family has doubled in size and carved out a haven in what was once a scary impersonal urban landscape. Most importantly, we have found good friends whom we love, and have settled into a community of friends from school, work, and church. Without this community of friends, all our efforts to create a home would have felt vain and empty. These friends have made us feel that we have a true home here.

Entry of our current house.

But in the past few months, the opportunity to move to California has arisen. I use the passive voice in that sentence intentionally. In more than one way, it seems like the path to California and to extended family has been paved for us and we are invited to walk down it.

But it's scary and sad to walk down a path away from what has become home. Even if that path is leading you to a place that you once called "home."

No dedicated "music room" in this house, but that didn't stop Evan from hunting down a baby grand piano.

Since we have told friends and family that we are moving back to California, we have seen different reactions.  In California, my sister-in-law has used all her skill and spirit to help us envision how we can settle into a different life. (It helps that she's a real estate agent!) On the other hand, good friends here have expressed sorrow to see us go. Most poignantly, they have said, "But our kids were going to grow up together." And my heart breaks a little bit. Because I realize that little children whose faces have become dear to me and whose parents I love, will grow up 1,200 miles away from me and my children.

When you hitch up your wagon and set your sights on a new home, you need those cheerleaders, those positive voices urging you to complete your journey. But you also need the quieter voices who remind you of what is being left behind. For there is no home on this earth that is not founded upon the inescapable sorrow of this life--the sorrow of being creatures whose every attempt to create a haven and call it "home" is marred by our finitude and the fallen world. As we leave behind one home and look forward to the next, I have to allow myself to be reminded that until we come to our heavenly home, we are always--in some way--traveling on a road that is a bustling yet barren highway. And we are blessed when we can create a home that is a refuge for family and friends. But these homes are always only temporary figures of the permanent home we long for, our heavenly home.