Heartbeats of home

home | hōm |

            1 "the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household."

home | hōm |

            2 "wherever I am with you."

In the past few weeks I have packed up twenty years of my life and shipped it across a thousand miles.  I have been married.  I have become a wife.  I have had a beautiful honeymoon and have road-tripped through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia.  

When I first started writing this post two weeks ago, I was sitting on a stool in the middle of stacks of boxes, half-assembled furniture, and a stack of wedding gifts.  Sometime that day, someone asked me if we were "settled in" yet.  Zach and I looked at each other and laughed.  Because the apartment looked something like this...

Please note: I'm cringing as I upload these pictures.  If you are not going to read the rest of this post, please, I beg of you, at least scroll down and look at the clean apartment pictures! ;)

The unpacking process was actually quite comical.  Did you know that when you're unpacking, things get worse before they get better?  There may or may not have been a few times when Zach and I suddenly dropped everything we were doing, let out a claustrophobic cry for help, blazed a trail through the forrest of cardboard, and ran outside to breathe some fresh air.

Finally, we began to catch glimpses of the rewards of our labor!  And the apartment began to look like this:

Slowly, but surely, it is beginning to come together.  It is beginning to become:

Home

But it is not just, "the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household."

In fact, it is not even the place where we will live permanently.  Moreover, it is still a bit bare and "in-progress"...but that's okay, because "home" is far more than a place.  It is: 

Wherever I am with you.

And that, is a beautiful place to be!