uprooted

you predicted this. 

this is all your fault. 

you said "mama, we are going to buy another house and move."

"no. absolutely not. we will live here forever because this is our home"

and i meant it. from the deepest deep of my soul i meant it. your dad has tried to conjure up ways to convince me to pack up my things and set up shop elsewhere several times, but each time i felt such a horrific gut wrenching pain about leaving my home that i told him "you can go. but jovie and i are staying here".

how dare he try to rip me from my home?!

makes me think of forest critters that have no where to go after the woods get chopped down. i'm panic-stricken. cold. motherless. afraid. alone. paralyzed. other words that elicit sad feelings. 

so when you declared your little declaration about us moving, i felt like i was at war. 

NOT YOU, TOO!

but then one day, your daddy and i dropped you and your brother off at nana and papaw's and were headed to a date for his birthday and we saw this fancy new neighborhood being developed.

that's when the unthinkable happened:

"turn in there! let's go look at the model home!", my mouth said it before my head and my heart could stop it. and before i was able to control my words, your dad had already parked in the drive of the model home and we were walking inside. 

and we both were immediately enchanted. 

stars in our eyes. 

the future so bright.

we should move! we both thought! 

to THIS house!

tomorrow!

unfortunately, there was no way we could afford that house, but it got our heads reeling:

"what if we have another kid?"

"where would we put it?"

"it can't go in the attic. that's probably not allowed"

"how much would our house sell for?"

and so we went home and researched the snot out of it and found out that staying in our house would probably be the stupidest financial decision we would ever make. (it's boring adult finance investment stuff...i'll explain it when you are 30 and care about this kind of thing)

so. this started the searching for a new house. 

i searched the WHOLE of DFW to find the perfect house. and i found the perfect house about 14 times. but then for whatever reason or another, God let us know that I was wrong and so I would keep trying. and would find another perfect house. 

i looked at older homes to renovate.

newer homes to live like royalty in. 

homes on every single nook and cranny of the metroplex. 

homes that we could never afford. 

homes that we would never WANT to afford. 

and homes that were too small but magical. 

homes that were too big and magical. 

you loved looking at houses, too. every time we'd pick you up from school you'd ask, "can we go look at another house?". mostly because you loved the stairs. (i was the same way when my mom and dad were house hunting when i was 6, btw). as soon as we would walk into a house, up the stairs you'd run. 

One night you asked your daddy if our house would have stairs. 

"i don't know....stairs are expensive. we may not be able to afford stairs"

"i have money in my piggy bank!!!! i can help you pay for them!"

but your $3.56 wasn't enough to afford the high standards that i'd set for our next home. 

It HAD to be better than our current one with little to no effort, or i wasn't budging. I'd decided. 

and...I'd exhausted all efforts of finding the perfect replacement for our home. and in the process, i felt like i owed our house an apology because every time i came home, i'd feel sad. i felt like i was a traitor to my homeland. an infidel. a monster. 

and so one day i sort of gave up.

we had settled on a house and were absolutely excited about it, but....i went to visit it to make SURE and turned out...i hated the house. 

that's when i took it to God. i said to Him, "you know what? i'm frustrated. i can tell you are wanting us to move to this area of dallas, but i hate this area. if you really want us here, you are gonna have to make it happen, bc i quit trying."

and not one mile later, i had this feeling that i needed to turn right down a country road. and two minutes later, i happened upon the most glorious neighborhood i'd even seen. in the middle of absolutely NOWHERE. and the houses were perfection. 

i called your dad and had him bring you to the house to look at it. 

inside the model you played like a princess up and down the stairs up and down the stairs. 

and you were in heaven. 

we were ALL in heaven. 

and so this is the house we chose to live in. 

to grow in. 

to make our home. 

...just as you predicted.