Home

After waking with the sun… actually, before the sun, Ella finally gave into sleep again. She slept beside me as I sipped my coffee, bathed in the comfort of my duvet and let morning come slowly.

He has been fighting a cold for a couple weeks now and finally, after a whirlwind weekend, my husband let himself be sick.

The kids didn’t have school. There was no place to go.

To say life has been busy, stressful, exhausting would be an understatement. Yesterday alone consisted of church, the German Choir’s spring concert, Choral Evensong, a birthday party for one of Ella’s classmates and a lovely house concert, at which, we were fortunate enough to be guests.

I started reading One Thousand Gifts again. I read it for the first time when we were preparing to go to Cambridge. When my soul was frozen over with bitterness and I cursed at God a lot – not because we were going to Cambridge but because of the years leading up to it. I didn’t like it the first time I read it. I wasn’t ready for it. I was angry.

Now we are entering into transition again but my heart is not so hard. Hurt, but not hard. It’s probably hard for people to understand why I keep doing it. Why I keep moving around like a nomad when I don’t want to. Sometimes things are hard to explain. And even for someone like me, who lives out my day to day based on stoic reason, there are times that call for heart decisions.

Someone said to me once that they always choose the option that seems the hardest and it has always worked out. I told someone that with all my heart I did not want to move, and they said that I probably shouldn’t go then…

I needed today. I think we all needed today.

It was simple. I need simple.

The last six months have called into question the person that I knew myself to be. Most of the time, I don’t recognize myself.

But today, today I was who I need to be right now and always.

Wife.

Mother.

I was thankful.

I was thankful for homemade soup, time to read, rain drops in sunlight, bubbles and bedtime stories.

This is the newest addition to our bedtime story library and I just have to share it with you.

When we used to live in Ladner we would pull into our driveway and declare HOME!
When we moved to Vancouver, Ella would say, “home” repeatedly as if it was a place she wanted to go and I worried that we had irreversibly damaged her. But then I realized home to her was not how we understand it. To this day, I am not sure what home is to Ella, but it can be used when referring to a friend’s house or a bowling alley. I am hoping this book helps us out but that aside, it is a beautiful book.