Feeling homeless

“Peace - that was the other name for home.”  ~Kathleen Norris

As a child, my family moved every few years. I learned at an early age that home was where your family took shelter together. Where love abides and laughter fills the halls. We could make a home anywhere.

However, after moving so much in my youth, I longed for stability in my adult life. I had the idyllic fantasy of putting down roots in a house, the same house for all the days of the rest of my life. I envisioned myself as a white-haired grandmother walking through my home and pausing in each room. I saw myself reaching out and stroking a wall with my fingertips and feeling decades of memories come flooding back, warming my soul.

Before the end of my marriage, I sought out my mother for advice and comfort. Interestingly enough, she has worked in real estate for more than 20 years. If there’s one thing she knows, it’s houses.

I confessed to her my sorrow and struggle over leaving our marital home. Separating my children from the house we all loved. She knew I didn’t want to end up in a string of rental houses with boxes stacked in the corner and someone else’s problems to keep fixing up.

Mom’s advice to me was simple and understood, “never fall in love with something that can’t love you back.” Her words became my mantra over the first difficult months, when I found myself in a tiny hamlet of a rental house with its creaking floors and drafty windows. Her words kept me strong when I no longer had my warm garage to park in or my beautiful kitchen to cook meals.

I took her words to mean I shouldn’t fear giving up my beloved house because at the end, it was only bricks and mortar. Where you reside needs to be more than a house, it needs to be a home.

 A home filled with love, laughter, warmth and protection. Protection from hurt, anger and anguish. Tears shouldn’t readily fall in fear and uncompromise.

It hasn’t been easy this past year. It’s hard not having my own house to go home to each night. To constantly need permission to hang a photo on the wall or change paint color in a certain room. I always have a feeling of “temporary” and I can’t shake the unsettled anxiousness running through my veins.

I am the type of person that longs for a stable place to stay. I’ve moved so many times and traveled so frequently. However, I’ve done everything in my control to make our new environment inviting and warm.

I want my children to know and understand that wherever we are as a family, our love survives. No street address defines who we are. And temporary is just that.

Someday, we will fall in love with a place that will love us back. Forever. Until then, I keep sweeping the floors in our rental house and restacking the boxes lining the outer edges of my bedroom. And more often than not, I add water to the vase of fresh daisies on my table.

And on my radio, I sing along to this song…and sometimes now the tears don’t fall. Maybe I am finally ready to move away from the house that built me.

“You leave home and you move on and you do the best you can
I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it

This brokenness inside me might start healing

Out here it’s like I’m someone else

I thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could walk around I swear I’ll leave

Won’t take nothing but a memory

From the house that built me”

~Miranda Lambert

Dance with me,
~Daisy