Five Years Ago. and To Be Continued.

Five years ago I crossed two state lines, pulled into a town I'd only visited twice, and up to a house I'd only seen once.

Five years ago a chapter ended and a new page turned, starting a chapter titled with hope and excitement and anticipation of a brand new version of life we'd never known before.

Five years ago today, we moved to Georgia.

To a town where we knew no one, to a dot on a map I'd never even noticed before.  Far away from what was "home," far away from all of our families and friends.

But it all felt right as we started unpacking, making our new house our home, filling each room with dreams we wanted to make...

Almost exactly three years to the day we arrived in Georgia, every single dream I thought we'd built came crashing down around me, in the middle of a house and in the middle of a town that both immediately felt scary and lonely and dark and full of despair...

I can say with absolute, 100% certainty that if you would've told me five years ago today, the day I began our new life in Georgia, that my life would look like this half a decade later - I would've told you that you were absolutely insane.

Never, in one hundred million billion years did I picture my life to take the turn that it did...

Living in that same house, just my kids and me, rebuilding our lives and making new memories and new dreams while filling the emptiness with every ounce of laughter we have inside of our bellies... and also finding myself alone in that same house every other weekend, surrounded by the deafening sound of silence.

So I don't say a lot of things with certainty anymore... my trust in my dreams and in my future and in love itself is still wavering, fear still outlines the pieces of my heart that have found their way back together.  But what I am certain of?  Jesus did not come and die for me so that I could live life defeated...

It's hard, you know?  Hard going at it alone with three littles, hard being a working-full-time-single-mom, and probably hardest still being in a town, heck, in a state, where I have ZERO family.

BUT.

I am happy.

And you know, if you would've told me that five years after I pulled into my driveway for the first time, my life would take that awful turn that it did, but that I'd fight like hell and get back on my feet and find my courage-filled-way and feel JOYFUL?  I would've told you that you were even crazier than before.

I sit here, reflective on the past five years in this small Georgia town... And in complete transparency, lately I have felt tempted to leave, to move back home, back to all of my immediate family - all of the people who, to me, hold the only promised, unwavering, and unconditional love I've ever known...

But maybe I am home?  
Maybe I've arrived exactly where God intended me to be? <3

All I know now is that it's

To Be Continued...