Been there, done that, still learning the lessons

This picture, to me, is always the "we hate Ithaca" picture.  It was taken on Cornell's campus, during one of my first visits - a time when Justin was seriously considering leaving
graduate school and I not so subtlety expressed my disappointment at making plans to move to this unfamiliar place to join him.

I definitely didn't see it coming that 5+ years later, 6 months after our move, little tears would well up in my eyes when I logged on to Weather.com and it still defaulted to Ithaca weather and I realized that...Toto, we're not in Ithaca any more.  (Slight consolation that it's a balmy 5 degrees warmer here in Ohio).

The point is, God took a town I hated and a house we refused to look at for the first few months of our house search and turned it into a beloved home.

It's not that I hate it here.  In fact, I think my first 6 months were more positive than my first 6 months in Ithaca.  I've met far more people than I did at this point in Ithaca.

But that doesn't stop the raw emotion of homesickness, missing the familiarity and the comfort and the belonging of being, well, home.

This is, by contrast, my "I love Ithaca" picture:
So much joy being surrounded by my some of my very favorite people in one of my very favorite places.

This is going to be home, especially once we're finished house-sitting and into our own place next summer.  But I'd forgotten what an emotional roller-coaster it is to look for a home.  And now there is more at stake, given that there's no graduation looming in the future to necessitate a move.  This may end up being our "forever" home.  Maybe not, but it might be.  And we're really feeling the "depressed" part of the economically depressed town, where so very many beautiful homes sit calling to our renovator's hearts, but are out of reach because the neighborhoods aren't safe for our girls.

I guess this is just a lot of raw emotion, being dumped here on my unsuspecting readers.  But this is as much journal as it is microphone, and I find myself revisiting my archives often to remember different times on our journey (and drawing strength from them again).

So this week, I'm clinging to the hope that God will always provide - and the memory that He always has.  And not too far in the future, we'll have deep friendships and a beautiful house and laugh that this had ever been anything other than home.

Until then, if you want to say a prayer for us to find a house and to feel peace in the process, I wouldn't mind.  :)

(I hadn't realized until now, but it was just 6 months this week that we arrived!  Time flies!)