REDEMPTION UNVEILED
Home Sweet Home {One Year Later}
One year ago, today, our house caught on fire. It has been quite the eventful past year! Thankfully, we have moved back into our house and we are loving every minute of it! Here's a bit of an update on our home and family. I hope you are doing well my friend, Haley.
One year ago, today, our home caught on fire.
Thankfully, it was not a total loss. Just the walls, part of the roof, our ceilings, insulation, cabinets, doors, windows, and a good chunk of our stuff.
The home we had remodeled for five months quickly turned into a total gut job. Awesome.
Fast forward seven months and we were able to move into our home again. This time everything was brand new and quite lovely.
We moved back into our house the exact same week that we bought our house last year, the last week of April. How is that for coincidence? Haha. It was the week after I turned THIRTY. I told Carter that I have now been “given” a house two years in a row for my birthday, so I have a pretty high bar for next year. Haha! Actually, to be honest, the only thing I would like for my birthday next year is to NOT move into ANY house!
We are home and we are so very happy.
We are settled, our house is decorated and every box is unpacked. Our garage is even cleaned out. (And some people don’t believe in miracles!)
We did it.
Our home is finished and quite beautiful. Did you hear that? FINISHED! Who knew that we would ever say that?!
It took us a LONG time to get here but we have arrived. We have had so many work days on this house, pre-fire and post-fire.
When the day finally came to move in, we had the kids stay the night with their grandparents and we finished moving into our house without telling them! Carter and I loaded the rest of our furniture and whatever I could fit into my van. (Why do I not think moving boxes are necessary??? Because I am an idiot. That's why.)
We unloaded our furniture, just the two of us, into our completely restored home. To be honest, we have dozens of people that would have been happy to help us with our FINAL move in, but it was therapeutic to do it ourselves. Well, for me at least. I loved bringing every single item into our home and deciding where it should belong.
We set up our furniture, made beds and set up the kids’ playroom. I wanted my kids to instantly feel at home when they walked in. No more being unsettled.
The next morning we brought them HOME. They were so surprised! It was amazing.
Within ten minutes, Mayliss had found the nail polish and was going wild with it. (Not surprising.) And within thirty minutes, Shep had gone missing. Upon doing a quick search, I found him alone in his bedroom with his Army guys scattered everywhere.
My heart was happy.
We were home.
We moved home at the end of April and I took a break from my writing and Social Media to focus on my family and getting us settled back into our normal lives. Whatever normal is?
Each day as I have organized and decorated I have tried to process the past year of our lives.
What in the world happened?
Things did not go as we planned. That's what happened. We had a plan, but our plan was taken from us. Without notice we found ourselves with a different path. We had no choice but to accept this *new plan*, but the process felt very disappointing. Funny enough, we actually became more excited with the new plan than our original one. Which is wonderful, but it did not make the experience any easier.
This past year was exhausting.
We had many moments of disappointment and discouragement. It was challenging and very stretching to feel so unsettled with our family of five for an entire year.
I have finally come up with the perfect word to sum up everything we went through this past year…
Life.
Life happened.
This is it. In all of its glory. Life brings us plans that we don’t want, but we have to take. I have learned that my life is much better if I choose to be appreciative of what I have instead of focused on everything I don't.
This life hands us things that we don’t expect and we didn’t ask for. We don’t get to pick what we are given, but we do get to pick how we play our hand. We may not always love what we have been dealt, but let's not forget to enjoy the game.
I will leave you with some pictures of our beautiful home...
Blessings my friends. -Haley
Finding Happiness in Our Lives
Most of us have things that we want to happen in our lives. We have our plans. We have our goals. We have our hopes.
What about right now? Are you enjoying your life? Are you content? Are you happy? If not, why? At times, it can feel like the reason we aren’t happy is because we don’t have everything we want...
Most of us have things that we want to happen in our lives. We have our plans. We have our goals. We have our hopes.
What about right now? Are you enjoying your life? Are you content? Are you happy? If not, why? At times, it can feel like the reason we aren’t happy is because we don’t have everything we want.
“If I only had this or that, I would be content.”
“If only this would happen, I would be happy.”
Once I finish school… or get a better job… or get married… or have kids… or get a bigger house… or a different spouse… or get more vacation time… or a new boss… or a nicer car… or more money… or… Once ____ happens I will finally be happy.
So is that how it works? Is happiness found in us getting everything that we want?
I don’t think so.
How often have we thought something would make us happy, but then it came and it didn’t satisfy us? Or, it made us happy for a while, but then we found ourselves no longer content and needing more. I wonder how many moments of our life we have missed because we were waiting for the next thing… the “better” thing.
Happiness is not found in getting what we want.
Happiness is found in being appreciative for what we have.
We must find a way to be content with what we have today. If we never find a way to be content in our “today’s” we will never be able to be content with our “tomorrow’s”.
I am afraid that too many of us have an idea in our mind that we will one day *arrive* to our happy place and then life will be wonderful.
We don’t *arrive* to our happiness.
We choose it.
We must stop believing the lie that our circumstances must change for us to be happy. True happiness comes when we can find a way to be appreciative, despite the fact that our circumstances are not perfect.
I have come to realize that perfection in life is a fleeting condition.
I am all for having goals and dreams, but these are things that should give us hope, not discouragement. We must find a way to live peacefully with both, our desires for the future and the reality of our present life.
We can't always get what we want, but we can choose to be appreciative for what we have.
Our discontentment is in our perception, but thankfully, we hold the keys to changing that.
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