Home

What a sweet and complicated word. When you're little "home" is usually whatever house you live in with your parents. As you grow, new "homes" start popping up. Life gets deeper, richer, and more complex. Sometimes, it leaves you confused. I remember the first time I referred to college as "home". It was the first time that I realized I had two homes now. Much has changed since college, including the addition of many more 'homes' for Neil and me, the most recent of which is our small flat near the beach in India.

This year our little apartment has transformed into a true home for us. A place where we eat, where we joke, where we cry, where dear friends come over to spend time together, a place where we host visitors, a place that, for the first time in our lives, we actually own everything in it! A place where when we walk through the door the feeling of arriving somewhere that we belong comes over us. Truly, we have a home here.

And yet, just like college, it is both a home AND a home-away-from-home. "Home" will always be the smell of my mom's apple/cinnamon spiced candles, my dad & brothers walking around the house shirtless, the constant chill of my room (which has NEVER gotten as warm as the rest of the house), hugs and kisses from my brothers, sitting at the counter with my dear SIL while mom mixes something tasty in her big tan bowl, hearing my dad working in the garage....HOME will always boil down to one place. I am blessed to know the true comfort and relaxation that a home can bring; it is that home that I can't wait to come into in December, breathe out a deep sigh, and drink my fill of all things loved and familiar.

Counting down!