This House

I look around at this house we've inhabited for the last 13 years. We've deeply loved it, and it's loved us back. This structure -- all brick, wood, and sheetrock -- has been a member of our family, almost mother-like in the way it's held us, protected us, hosted some of the most important events in our lives, including the wedding Miner and I anticipated for so many years.

This house has a spirit and a memory. It keeps all our moments, even the ones we've already forgotten or will forget.

For Squeak, Sprout, and Gumball, this is the only home they've ever known. As adaptable as this family has learned to become, the younger kids have never had to adapt to a transplantation. This home has been our king stability; in the shifting of everything else in life, this house has been our anchor.

2014 has been "The Year of Letting Go" (No thanks to Disney for yet another enslaving pop culture association!). I've learned to let go of my 21-year-old and allow him the fullness of his independence with no judgement or fearful admonitions from me. I've learned to let go of so much of my perfectionism and unreasonable expectations of myself and the kids. (And my husband, too!) I've learned to let go of my resentment and defenses that have done nothing but poison my marriage and rob us of our completeness for far, far too many years. I've learned to let go, too, of my death-grip dedication to Acadiana, which I have come to love and adore even more than I did Hawai'i.

In 2014, God has taught me: If I want to see the next chapters of my life the way He intended for them to be written, I'll have to find it in me to let go of my crude, incomplete visions of the future...let go of the fear and bitterness I've nurtured for the most painful settings of my past. Let go, and go ahead.

This house, I have deeply loved. I'll remember it always, and it will remember me. I may never look back -- maybe I will -- but only to say "Thank you, Home, for holding us so long and so well."