Making Peace with Unfinished Projects

On making a home when you're moving from house to house to house...

Two years into our home-of-our-own and perhaps there is a fledgling permission to resolve my lifetime of wanderings into some sort of a rooted habitation. Decades of military brathood and relocation followed by decades of marital insecurities over where is home, what is home, what kind of home, and are we at home yet. Quite frankly, I am exhausted by all of the moving I’ve done in my life, and even now, I am so far from feeling settled I wonder if I ever will be, this side of heaven. When asked, I never commit to being in this house forever (I’m awed that anyone could ever do that about their own house).

I’ve tried in every house we’ve lived in to make it a “home”, a place for raising children and for practicing hospitality. We’ve lived in McMansions, we’ve lived in uninsulated cabins (including our current one). In every place, I’ve welcomed babies, planted gardens, painted walls, and cooked from scratch. In every place, I’ve embraced the quirks and challenges and worked hard to “make…