It feels surreal to write the words: we are home. We passed the final inspection. We got the passing result Thursday evening. Friday evening and all day Saturday we had a church choir workshop, so Sunday afternoon some amazing friends from church came over and helped us move the final pieces of furniture and we spent the first night in our little cottage.

All of us are a little numb and struggling to believe we’ve really moved in. It’s still a bit chaotic, and we have items still lingering in our old studio and my parents house, but slowly, things are falling into place.

We poured a special bottle of champagne to celebrate the evening we got the news. As we raised our glasses, my dad remarked that it felt a little anticlimactic. We all agreed: fifteen months of waiting and working led to this moment, standing in a quiet living room filled with boxes and trash bags.

It’s interesting how endings and beginnings are often intertwined. Our season of waiting hasn’t come to a dramatic finale, but rather a soft decrescendo as we settle into this cottage we get to call home. The ending is coming in stages, leaves falling gently while the buds of new beginnings take their place.

There is much still to do, but it feels like a weight has been lifted from our shoulders. As we emptied boxes, I found a note to our future selves on the inside of one of the flaps I had written fifteen months prior whilr packing: welcome home.

As I’ve unpacked, I’ve realized grief and joy are just as intertwined as our beginnings and endings. I’ve rediscovered bits of our lives we hadn’t seen in a while. Some made me laugh, and some made me cry. My favorite Dutch oven. Last Christmas and birthday cards from my uncles. Thank you notes from my former students. A hat I knit for a baby girl I’ll never get to meet. The leftover programs from our wedding. Plates given to me by a childhood friend who has since removed themselves from my life. Poetry books.

So much joy; so much sorrow.

I am learning to sit with both, and be grateful for both.

The choir workshop we had this weekend was a great source of joy as well, even though it pushed our moving timeline a little further. My amazing mother took Michael so I could participate. Our guest directors were masterful and honed our small choir into something beautiful. I learned so much, and I’m excited to share about it more in a future post.

By Sunday night we were pretty exhausted, so we ordered in dinner and sat outside by the fire pit, enjoying the hint of autumn chill in the evening breeze. We drank wine and talked about the new beginnings and new routines we were starting, and reminisced about happy memories from the past fifteen months.

Thank you, dear friends, for your prayers and support as we walked through this season. If we have learned anything at all throughout this process, it is the beauty of community.