Disorder and Order

After over six months of living here, my husband and I have finally unpacked our basement. Excluding a weekend when we first moved here, the entire bottom floor of our home has looked something like a shanty town. Dishevelled piles of boxes, random articles of clothing, and mismatched furniture were strewn in mighty stacks wherever we tossed them while moving in. We didn't care so much about how it looked. We had no real plans for it. It was too humid to make much use of safely with the children and with a baby on the way neither of us had the time or the energy to make any real headway in the large room that takes up most of that floor.

What really convinced us to make the time to sort things out was that we finally, truly decided we were staying here for more than a year. We had the opportunity to look into buying a home in the country at what looked to be a fair price. This house, that of my maternal grandfather, was nothing less than my dream house. A six bedroom house on a fairly large piece of land, that has the kitchen of my dreams, a layout I adore for our young family, and plenty of room for my husband to ply his trade as a cabinetmaker and finish carpenter. We could have our own garden, a shed for any animals we'd want to raise, and, perhaps best of all, we would be surrounded by my extended family, whom I have seen far too little of in the past years. In spite of this very overwhelmingly positive prospect, we took it to prayer and found our thoughts turned to staying in the city, in our current home. It wasn't without a twinge of sadness that I let go of the idea of the big country home in which I spent so many summers and holidays. I had to let go of the cheerful front door with a hummingbird captured beautifully in its stained glass window, the true sign that we were at our second home, a place where my grandparents would be waiting for us with expectant smiles and the smell of fresh bread.

So, we decided to stay here. In our cute city townhouse. Four bedrooms, big living area and lots of ugly shag carpet and wacky paint (sorry Dad, but I'm so over the pumpkin orange with green trim in the livingroom. Tuscan villa this ain't). We couldn't help but see so much potential within these four walls. A little paint here, some new flooring there, perhaps a workshop in our basement... And that's when it hit us. If we were really staying here, we couldn't live in complete order upstairs while the downstairs was in complete disorder. To be fair, a lot of items are in the wrong room or even the wrong floor because we had been hesitant to fully unpack. So at last we decided to give in, and in a few short days things started to come together. Suddenly, our basement has furniture that is there with intention. The small room is set up artfully with all of my husband's tools. The main room is starting to take on a very nice atmosphere as either a games room or even a second playroom for these winter days when going outside isn't an option, but a mere change of scenery dispells our cabin fever.

With no regrets, we unpacked our last box this weekend. If this can be home, even just for now, let it be so. No more holding back. If this is where we're meant to be, we will be, living wholly in this moment and, hopefully, enjoying it.