Some time ago, amidst the mid of summer’s heat, humidity and full abundant greenery, Roger brought me south, sweetly coaxing me away from a home I loved, that dear home in the mountains with character and tranquility and a whole host of beautiful memories. 

We rented a car and grabbed a coffee and talked me through the nervousness of the day ahead 

‘what, just what would we do if we couldn’t find the right, perfectly right home’? 

I’m a home person, he knew and I knew it wouldn’t work, just wouldn’t work for me or the children to be moved into a suburb of a huge American city. 

I listed it out, all the unusual requests for land and home, trees and shrubs,

 some manicured but mostly wild overgrowth, 

a few plots of dirt, spots to plant and watch roots grow strong,

 birds and quiet to hear them sing, 

walking paths, and wildlife. 

And the house… 

windows, giving view to the seasons, bedrooms because bedrooms are nice, 

wood floors - this family doesn’t do nice things to carpet,

 lots of walls - walls can have bookshelves and bookshelves can have books, 

with character all about, 

Texas homes are big, awfully big, but they lack what I love, charm. 

He tried to sound assuring, “lets just see how the day goes, we have a long list of potential homes, and, and we can always renovate, add rooms, walls, windows even character”. 

I didn’t really know where we were when he turned off that busy street, driving into a peaceful neighbourhood with country homes and long white fences, 

when we rounded the bend and I saw a doe with three dotted fawns grazing in a front yard and behind the deer was the sweetest home with gables and a wide front veranda. 

I was just thinking how happy I would be if we were able to find a home as welcoming as this one, 

Roger interrupted my moment of longing by saying this was the very house we were going to look at! 

I knew it was the one. 

We both did. 

He smiled and I cried and we both laughed. 

It had all the character I was looking for, we did renovate… a lot! 

But thats another story for the inside to tell. 

Let’s stay outside today…

It’s a small acreage; about an acre and a half of the land is landscaped and the rest is wild-woods for the children to get caught up in thousands of imaginations. 

The whole house is embraced in flowerbeds. 

And the trees, oh such beauty, the whispering and dancing with the glory of seasons upon their limbs.

Everyday we have deer stroll and graze through our lawns. 

A white fence laces the upper lawn that opens from the lane down to the home, which is sweetly inviting with the front veranda wrapping around the house. 

Every window has shutters 

and gables top off the charm. 

It really is a welcoming and lovely home.

 I feel as though the Lord led us not only to a beautiful home but the right home. 

His generous care to our needs and desires make this home so very special to each of us. 

{Please note its the middle of winter here and on the browner side.} 

{Corner of the Front Veranda}

{Front steps and other side of the front veranda which wraps around to the kitchen entrance}

 {Kitchen entrance and the window to the left of the door is my laundry-room window} 

{Side entrance leading to the kitchen door, the two windows side by side (left) is the playroom and above is Brennan's nursery window} 

{ This use to be an oversized three car garage we converted it into a one car garage and homeschool room. On the far left you can see where I park then we had the two windows and french doors installed into the previous garage bays} 

{This use to be two garage doors, now it's the homeschool room}

{Front Lawn} 

~
 I’ve been nervous about coming back to these pages, so much of this place has been about the person I was in that home among those dreams, I needed to first grasp the ache and sadness and ease out of all the changes.

 As time and structure has relieved some of the chaos and a natural ebb and flow of days are emerging I am understanding who I still am and excepting what parts have changed, what I have grown into and what is gone forever.

 I grasp things better once I’ve passed through them, I guess I'm a 'hindsighter',  I am comfortable with that, my silence has been essential to my soul and the natural effects intensely required of my time, every second has been committed to as gracefully as possible move my family made up of six-young and one adventurous man to a new country and home. 

That was just about all I could do during the season of moving. 

And to tell you the truth I had no words, they just hadn’t come. 

Until sometime during the holiday season, a sparkling evening with quiet music a quiet moment and glass of wine, I found I was able to encapsulate our year on page, send out a holiday letter, and if I may use that same letter as a launch to bring me back into this space of writing and journalling, and recording the moments of our evanescent days, all the beauty and broken of this life, 

and the humble honesty of my heart. 

Our Holiday Letter 2014

 Familiarity slipped in silently and unannounced, just the way dawns come and go, life turns from one advent to another. I’ve been waiting for it, the way one waits to catch a breath or fall into a long awaited moment, I knew once we made it to that moment it would be good. There would be and has been a sense of comfort when you find pace, a rhythm, essence of days left behind, soil and home.

Change has come so often this year, and with it new life, adventures, stories and faith and so much more tucked tight within the passing of time.

It was about this time last year, endless days of nausea revealed the coming of a spring baby. We were humbled, our autumn had been a time of heartbreak, journeying with some of our dearest people through the hard brokeness of this life, you feel it, when those you love are wounded. Amidst the tears and the burdens, God planted life within our season of sadness, and with it hope, we experienced it so dynamically in those days the stark contrast between hope lost and hope beautifully anew through the coming advent of a newborn. Days became about preparing for a sixth child, great anticipation ensued, along with logistical concern, we were truly heading into a complete out numbering of child to adult. June 1st was the moment, everything happened so fast, Roger got to sharpen his midwifery skills yet again, and deliver yet another one of our sons on our bathroom floor!  That first breath changed our life, our world was gloriously different, never to return to the lesser capacity of love we had known but a second before hand. God gave us another son, Brennan Grant, he was something, familiar yet divinely unique, oh the miraculous details of a newborn. It was at dawn when all the sleepy toddlers crawled up into our bed that I realized fully how rich and wild and busy our life had suddenly become, there smiling and wiggling around me were four little people four and under, a just turned four year old, two-two year olds and our newborn. It was one of those moments you just smile and wonder, take a deep breath and be swept away, right into the beautiful chaos of loving  these littles.

We will forever treasure the weeks that followed Brennan’s birth, there were hints of change stirring deep within, faint, the way you sense the essence of spring upon the earth long before a tangible sign.  Just a whispering and hint.  Intuitively I knew what was coming and I longed to slow a good-bye, memorizing the utter fulfilment of this home in these mountains, hang on to them, trace my heart delicately along the memories and beauty that had enriched our last years. 

I watched the season change, trees open after winters dormancy, kids released from icy confines, days lasting longer, fragrant blooms placed on the sill catching the breeze of open windows, a newborn's lashes lying so peacefully upon the flush of sleep, curled fists, his soft breath, I was lingering in the moments, embedding them deeply within the collection of our story, I was saying good-bye before I knew why.

It wasn’t long. Our company asked, honoured Roger with a highly coveted role, one of the most intense developmental positions within our company, he never sought this role out, it was a door Roger never pushed to open, but there it lay wide before us. We prayed, humbly asking for wisdom, time and time again we felt lead to except the role, taking on a new adventure, country, home.  With just seven weeks before he was needed to start his new job we flew south for a whirlwind weekend and bought a home. Once we returned to Canada we had six weeks to apply for our visas, do all the paperwork for an international move, prepare and list our home, drive our travel-trailer 22 hours return trip to park and store at my brothers, transition out of a job (Roger’s), pack our house, pack our bags, say goodbye to our family and friends, all while processing and grieving the end of a dream.  When our suitcases were packed and just days before our flight we got a call, one of those calls that the voice on the other end is quivering, nervous, the house we bought, the one that felt right, a rare gem nestled in nature and country, surrounded by the bustle of one of America’s largest cities, wasn’t going to work out.  There were complications, a hefty finical lien, twelve year divorce dispute; we should walk away find a new home to buy. 

Six young children, one postpartum mama, and a man going into a new highly intense job, got on a plane moved to a new country and city with no home! It was trepid, walking in the dark, over unfamiliar paths, and your only option was to cling to a God who can be trusted!  Oh we clung, held fast to the faithfulness of God, walking by faith not by sight! We experienced miracle upon miracle and saw the mighty hand of God. It wasn’t easy but it was beautiful! By miraculous intervention we got the house we had believed was to be our home in the south. When the title was finally transferred to our name and our realtor handed us the keys and said she had goose-bumps because she couldn’t explain what she had just witnessed and in all her thirty professional years she had never seeing anything quite like this. And we said it with reverent

awe, that this was God and prayer and the living out of Faith. We felt humbled and blessed and that we were riding the wave of something so much bigger than us! 

We then had the wild ambition to totally transform the house, polish it to the needs of a large family. Replace carpets with wood, walls for windows, garages for a homeschool room and attics for bedrooms. Three weeks quickly turned into six and like all renovation projected timeframes were missed. Kids became restless for a life without transition and boxes. It was time, for them and for us to settle in, call this place home and allow it to become that. 

And so it has, we wake to familiarity, and now that the move is behind us, much of life is the same. There is a constant within the varying roles of Motherhood that do not alter for location whether it be Africa, Bragg Creek, and now Houston, Texas.  As a Mother, life carries on; the same amount of laundry needs doing, food made, children cared for, school taught, life nurtured. It feels relieving to experience the constancy of home life humming away as usual. For Roger life is far more pleasant, he loves the weather and conveniences Texas offers, he is finding his new role just the challenge he was looking forward to. Our kids patter away with the energy of youth and the carefree wonder of childhood, each exuding their own unique strengths and challenges. There is such a resilient spirit within each of our children. They have been grand adventurers, daring comrades and our greatest treasures.

We both feel overwhelmed by the faithfulness of God; its been a beautiful humbling, coming to experience our God deeper, feel His presence, trust His care and guidance and except His peace when ours was wavering with the tilt of this world’s burdens.  The experiences of 2014 changed us, we left all that was home and comfortable, moved to a new city, country; we've been stretched raw, exhausted, yet we are fuller with life, we changed from a family of seven to eight, we are richer because of the depth of our journey, we are stronger, we love each other wilder, we have a new soul and new memories and all through it God has been with us.  Because of that we are thankful and joyful and absorbing the beautiful ups and down of the past and eager for the moments laying in-wait. 

~

This year may you experience the God of Life and all the wonderful depth of his goodness for you. 

We love you!

Roger, Rosaleen, Marion (10), Davina (7), Lachlan (4), Jeriah (3), Amaris (2), Brennan (7m).

~

Three years ago the two of us sat on the freshly painted front porch. I, silent with thoughts of joy. 

I was home, sweeping my gaze over the dreams to come. 

This was the place my heart long waited for in the craze of houses and years spent in Africa and Asia.

  I was utterly content, us together again, our expatriate years behind us and the dreams of a life in Canada stretching long and beautiful into our future.

~

 He was sitting quite beside me as I slipped my hand into his and rested deep into this man I love, the one who helped make this heart for country life a dream to live and breath, an experience of beauty to live daily. 

I asked for his thoughts, certain they were the same as mine. 

He starts slow, in the way that has become familiar as the finger print of our love, 

him hanging on to an idea until it is formed just perfectly, 

“our visa’s expire today” slow and steady he pauses shaping the coming question 

“so your happy, to stay, here, give up our adventures, slip them away like our luggage”? 

Every word laced with the hint of far off lands, elements and traces of something foreign with curves around every unknown bend. 

Words weighted with the longing of an adventurer. 

I knew then this was just a stop, a home between stories. 

In that moment three years ago, I loved him wider then I ever knew I could.

Wide enough to carry my fear and the giving of this life, this home built on familiar soil tucked away like a dream among forest and fields, hemmed in by the wild beauty of the rockies. 

If I could paint my dreams this would be it. 

~

~

I knew the truth of our love then, that the loveliness of this dream is made pure by the people I share it with.

 I clasped my hand a little tighter round the assurance of his.

When life came anew to us and we were awash in the early days of infancy the waves of change called.

 He asked it slow and sure taking his own patient way to perfectly form his question,

 “would I go with him, fallow him south” 

 Deep into the heart of lone stars, sweet tea, hanging ferns, humidity and y’alls.   

I wondered then if I was able, to say good-bye, start over, move away from a lifetime of  hoped for memories. I know my desire would be to to grow my roots tight around what is familiar. Raise my babies under the wide blue of Alberta’s sky, watch the seasons of our family change within the walls they were born. Hold on, dig down, stay put. 

Yet,

Loves lasting depths lead me on.

 Giving me courage to face the unknowns. 

~

~

I know that in the new stories that are to be etched out of tomorrows memories I will grow, deeper, in love. 

Beatific 

my life's word will define all the unknown

binding me with

Beauty and Blessing. 

~

 ~