Home

It was one year ago this past week that he left. Again. One year ago the kids and I watched as Jamy left our home and didn't come back for seven months.

There is so much that could be said to fill in the huge gaps of that statement. And I'm sure someday I'll share much more of the details. But for now it's enough to say that when sin creeps into a heart, it creeps into a marriage, and a family, and has devastating consequences. And we lived through that devastation for a long time.

It's hard to put words to what going through a separation that long meant for our family. Being a single mama, grieving with my kids the tremendous loss of a husband and daddy, and praying for my husband every day to remember his identity in Jesus.

The short version is that Jesus did a miracle in our family. Primarily he did a miracle in my husband's heart that changed the trajectory of our family.

One year ago I literally didn't know if Jamy would ever come home. I had to think through the very real possibility of what it would look like to be a family of three and the kind of home I could afford as a single mom. The reality of living in a run down apartment and figuring out how to do life without a husband and a daddy in our home.

And then, over months of heartbreak and hard work and Jesus changing hearts, Jamy came home. He came home over Father's Day weekend and since then God has been knitting our hearts together like never before. The amazing work that God has been doing didn't happen overnight and we're still in the process of healing and looking to him to be our hope. But Jamy has been fervently pursuing righteousness, our marriage, and our kids. He is a different man than the one that left our family a year ago. 

When he came home, we started to dream together again. God had been restoring our hearts and our family and our dreams as a couple.

We decided to buy a home. Almost six years ago when we moved to Kansas City, we left the first home we had purchased together. It turns out the timing couldn't have been worse. We left at the height of the economic downturn: our home took eighteen months to sell and we took an enormous loss. It had taken us years to get out from under the mess and now we thought that by Spring we would be in a space to finally buy again.

But in the quiet of one summer night, I admitted to Jamy that I didn't want to do one more holiday season in our rental home. In the past three years, Jamy has been gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas twice. This space held more hard memories then happy ones; more heartbreak than celebration. But looking at our bank account and our timeframe meant that we would do one more holiday in that same space and I prayed that God would redeem it. But I was dreading the fall, when the winter creeps in and always reminds me of my husband's cold heart and the devastation to our family.

And then God, in his extravagant grace to our family, opened up opportunities for it to be wise for us to begin looking at homes. When we started looking we had no idea how amazing his timing would be. We looked at nine homes. The ninth one we looked at we knew was meant to be ours. It was listed on a Monday morning and by that night our offer was accepted. In less than a month we had moved in.

And in God's crazy goodness, we moved in the same week last year that Jamy left. 

This year instead of watching my husband drive away, I'm watching him pull in the driveway and get tackled by the kids who are eager that Daddy is home from a day at work. This year, instead of sitting alone at night, I'm cuddling on the couch with him in front of the fire and talking about what God is doing in our hearts and lives. This year, instead of making dinner for three of us, the four of us are cooking in the kitchen and dancing to the radio.

So this space in much more than a new house for our family. This is the space where we will call home. This is the space that we will fill with new, beautiful memories. This is the space where we continue to heal and God will continue to redeem and restore. This is the space where we will celebrate miracles. Incredible miracles God has already done and many more I'm sure he has in store for us.

Only God could take a devastating anniversary for our family and turn in into an all-out celebration of his extravagant grace and kindness to our family.

Only God could make this house our home. For all four of us.