little black journal

Several of our friends have recently moved into beautiful new houses or are looking to buy their very first place of their own. And all this movin’ on up has had me feeling a bit…down. It’s felt like we’re stuck in a rut while everyone around us is swept up in the excitement of change and newness and fresh beginnings. Where I once saw warmth and style and coziness in our little townhome, I started seeing smallness and a lack of closet space and too much dust on the baseboards. I’m so happy for our friends, but I couldn’t stop myself from (sulkily) wondering: when will we get our dream house? I started dwelling on visions of a cozy little reading nook by a window overlooking a lake and an entire wall lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a backyard with a fire pit and then I stopped myself, because I realized my deepest desires are actually so, so much bigger than all of that. My dream house is a place where Shane and I spend evenings cooking and eating together, drinking wine and eating brownies while we lay on the couch and talk. Where I get up in the middle of the night to rock our crying baby back to sleep. Where our little one takes his or her very first steps right before getting knocked over by our adorable-but-rambunctious Wheaten Terrier puppy (I know, I’m reaching here…). It’s where our friends gather on sunny weekends to barbecue and play games and eat ice cream, and where our family gathers at Christmas to open gifts and roast turkey and laugh together.  It’s where Shane teaches our kids to throw a baseball while instilling in them a deep devotion to the San Francisco Giants. It’s where we grow old together, where we weather the sorrows and joys that life surely has in store for us. It may not have a jacuzzi tub or a giant wall of windows (gasp!), but wherever it is (could we be in it already?), it will be shelter for our little family and will be home in every sense of the word. And that is what I’m truly longing for.