Tag: new home

the little white house

MarthaKimball11 Comments

I stumbled on this song months ago and knew it gave words to our one-day new home.  I knew we would probably end up with an old home, a fixer upper, and I find beauty in that.  In living new fresh life in old walls.  Consider playing this song as you scroll through these pictures.  It’s somewhat of a blessing I’ve been humming over this new home.

These pictures are from our first time showing the kids the house, after we had keys in hand.  We didn’t want to show it to them at all until it was officially ours, because the process had been difficult for them when offers on previous homes had fallen through.  We opened the door for the first time, they ran in squealing.  Brandon carried me over the threshold.  It was a sweet, sweet moment after a long wait.  And how appropriate that we closed on the house and took the kids to see it for the first time on the first day of Spring!  I kept thinking of these words:

My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
    and come away,
for behold, the winter is past;
    the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
    the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.”
Song of Solomon 2:10-12

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And so, we get to move in and watch everything come to life, turn green, blossom and shine.  We feel full of hope for what is ahead, seeing God provide this home for us in His own time and way through miraculous means.

Brandon and I have been working all week getting things ready and clean, and we emptied out our storage container yesterday into the home.  I took the kids this morning and began unpacking a few toys for them to play with as I set up the kitchen.  They were so excited, seeing our things again and seeing the home begin to take a bit of shape.  The furnace decided not to work the day after we closed, so we are still working on getting that taken care of so we can move in officially.

Our last home had the numerical address 23 and for a long time now I have been clinging to Psalm 23.  As we’ve walked this journey with Phoebe and her health battle, as we’ve admitted to ourselves that we have a chronically ill child, as I’ve fought gnawing fear in the dark of night, Psalm 23 has been a constant companion and comfort.  It was always familiar but now it is personal.  Now it is like a sharp sword in my hands against the darkness.  When I saw that our house number on this new little white house was 623, I thought immediately of Psalm 23:6 and looked it up.  How fitting it is.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

This is His promise to us in this life, isn’t it friend?  No matter what we are walking through, whether joy or pain in our current circumstances, surely GOODNESS and MERCY are gonna follow us everywhere we go.  AND?  We might have just bought our first home, but our hope isn’t wrapped up in these walls, thankful though we are for a place to call home.  We are always a bit out of place in this world, always a bit left longing for the house of the Lord.  Always pilgrims until we make it there one day.  We are gonna make it there one day, friend.  We are going to dwell with Him in HIS house forever.  If the joy we feel in buying our first home is only a foretaste of that joy, oh what great joy it will be!

I can’t wait to share more of our journey as a family in this new little home with you, readers!  Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.  And may our hearts like doors open wide, open wide.

ps.  Thank you to so many of you who have prayed with us and for us as we walked out this long journey and as we continue to face battles and uncertainties ahead.  We couldn’t have done it without you!  Specifically our families, our parents, my parents for letting us live with them in the interim and bring a whole lot more noise to their lives, as well as our church family and specifically our life group.  Kim + Time, Heather + Chris, Kevin + Mary Lynn, Tessa + Rod: you guys are OUR PEOPLE.  You have blessed us with scripture, prayer, encouragement, meals, muscle and brawn.  You are teaching us what it means to live as Christ’s hands and feet here and how beautiful it is to live knit-together lives.

 

carrying on

MarthaKimball2 Comments

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Buds rise quiet and swell on the branch.  It’s the first week of March, everything and everyone is anxious for spring.  Some days it’s already been in the low 70s, sunny and warm, and the next day it’s back in the 30s.  It’s still technically winter, but spring presses in, trying to burst forth.

It seems like a fitting analogy for my own season.  For this wait.  Last weekend we packed our home into a large box, essentially, and closed it up, everything on hold for now until we close on our home at the end of this month.  We moved our bare necessities into my parent’s home nearby and have moved in with them for the interim.  Such wild grace to us, this welcome mat extended to our family, the carving out of space and sharing of everything so that we can walk through this transition with as much normalcy as possible.  Because we are here with them, my mom has been helping out even more than normal with my day-to-day tasks.  She watched the kids while I went for a run the other morning–such a gift to a momma who normally squeezes in my workouts in the house during the kid’s nap time (necessary but terribly boring sometimes).  It does my soul good to get out on a quiet trail and have the solitude of the woods.  As I was running, enjoying the movement of feet and legs, the filling and emptying of lungs, the way the wind sounds moving through winter limbs and pines, I was aware of a hush of waiting.  I don’t know really how else to describe it, only that I felt my own soul’s wait as I felt the natural world waiting in the dormancy of winter for spring.  Everything is still alive, though it has the appearance of death.  Everything is holding life though it has the appearance of barrenness.  But the life cycle demands that death and dormancy must happen so that new life can burst forth.

We resist our own winters.  We resist periods of death and dormancy and waiting.  We resist pain of any sort, of course.  Yet it is good to remember that it is necessary, this winter, so that spring can come.  And spring will come.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43:19

We are in this beautiful and awkward season of in-between.  Our home packed up, waiting for the word that this home we have been working toward will in fact be our own.  We haven’t shown the home to the children yet.  They’ve ridden out this transition well, but not without some tears and questions and some “I wanna go home!”  Meanwhile we are in a period of waiting for answers on Phoebe’s health.  She is nearing the end of this three month elimination diet, and soon we will do more blood work and likely another endoscopy.  All around the same time as our closing on the home and moving in.

How appropriate it seems, that our own family story would coincide with the seasons, the melting of winter into spring.  I can’t help but also think of this lenten season, the time during the church calendar when we remember Jesus’ death and sacrifice for us so that we may that much more enjoy and celebrate the resurrection (Easter).

So we embrace this season of holy hush, the waiting, the discomfort of it, because we know that our own spring is coming.  All of the details of our story may not work out perfectly and our circumstances may continue to prove difficult, but we know that somehow God will be faithful to us and will provide all that we need.

And so we carry on.  We receive the gifts of this winter season as it comes to an end.  We enjoy this special time with my parents and sharing life together.  We keep on with school, with our piles of library books, with knitting and other little family rhythms.  The kids find new trees to climb and places to make a fort.  We look for the early signs of spring, the blooming forsythia, the green pressing up through soil.  We pay attention to the birds, noticing how gladly they sing.

keeping rhythm

MarthaKimball1 Comment

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Only two weeks now until we say goodbye to this little house and move on out.  We have been spending the last number of weekends packing in big spurts, then trying to keep life going normally during the week.  We packed the books on Saturday and our home feels a bit colorless and empty without them.  There is so much to do, as anyone who has ever packed and moved knows well.  But in the middle of it, life goes on, and I try to keep some semblance of normalcy going.  Our daily and weekly work–cooking, schooling, reading, cleaning, outside play, trips to the library and grocery store, knitting for me in the evenings after the kids are in bed.

Thus, my random smattering of photos.  The children spread out on the floor watching movies.  Finding Philippa after nap time on top of her bookcase, having colored all over her hands and dress in colors that actually coordinated her dress.  Kombucha batches brewing on the counter, catching the afternoon light.  Children playing and snuggling and reading books on my bed.  Little random moments that make my heart happy and light and keep me grounded.

I feel that I can share with you now that we are under contract on a home, but won’t close until the end of March.  We are excited but also trying to keep our emotions in check until everything goes through.  It has been such an up and down journey, certainly not what we ever would have expected.  Since we have about a month of limbo between this home and our new home, a sweet friend has offered for us to live in their new home in the meantime.  We will put most of our stuff in storage and live fairly minimally during our time there, so I’m not sure how diligently I will be blogging.  Be praying if you think of it for the children, that they handle this transition well.  I think they are mostly excited and will be resilient in the midst of it, and I’m guessing it will throw Philippa off the most, as she has only lived in this home and has a strong love for being home, not usually sleeping well anywhere else.  I’m hoping by keeping some of our family rhythms going, we can provide a sense of consistency.

All this upheaval and change in the midst of our ongoing battle for Phoebe’s health and the uncertain future ahead has me so thankful that we make our home in God alone, wherever we are wandering on this earth.  He is our home, He is our security.  He is our constant in a wild storm.  There really can be peace in the midst of the tumult.  Why do I forget this every time?  Sometimes every day?  I am thankful also for that sense that wherever Brandon is, wherever my children are, that is where home is for me.  What kind of walls hold us and who owns them doesn’t matter too terribly much.  Trials of any sort always pare life down to the basics, the simple and small things that matter most.

In Him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28)