I am overcome with appreciation.
I benefit from having a place where my roots were
established long before I was born. Both sets of grandparents call West Texas
home, along with my parents and my husbands’ family. I have an unchanging place
to call home, a rare treasure as I venture away from it.
The beauty of my home is not all tangible {though I can
appreciate the desert in ways I couldn’t as a child}- rather, it is felt. Home
is the smell of a vanilla candle burning and Mama hugging me at the front door
in her dirty apron while dinner {spaghetti I hope?} simmers. It is generations
gathered round the patio table on a starry night, bellies satisfied until the
next meal. It is sisters piling on a bed, laughing and sharing stories in a
room that looks the same as it did 10 years ago. It’s the sound of the house
coming alive, noise traveling down the hallway just a little too early in the
morning as Daddy wakes up with a cup of coffee and Fox News.
Home is where I look forward to taking my children to visit, so they
can experience the love of family, real Tex-Mex and the neon sunsets. A gift to
be passed down, this little corner of Earth occupies a big part of my Texan
heart.
But.
Roots unchanging, I find my fruits and joy are blossoming here
in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Never mind that I would hold this place
sacred simply because it is where my two children have grown up and I have
found who I am in being their mother, it is more than those things.
For a girl
raised on a flat stretch of brown dirt as far as the eye could see, the beauty
uncovered here is life-giving in every sense. Even as I search for the words to
describe it, I gaze out a window and my eyes are met with the sight of pine
trees dusted in a fresh layer of snow, etched into one of the many sloping
hills in our ‘backyard’- inspiration is evident in every corner, and that is the priceless gift I have been
given here. I never knew that my soul was starving for a ‘paradise’, or that I
would be so fortunate to live in one (if such a thing exists, it is surely the
Black Hills on a warm Summer day.) The friendships forged here on the prairie
over motherhood and Jesus are enough to sustain and strengthen me even as I
long for home at times. The women of South Dakota have hearts of gold, I have
been welcomed and cared for by them and seeing my child form her first
friendships with theirs is enough to make my heart burst with thankfulness.
The adventure we {my little growing family} have found on
this frontier has been defining, and refining. Not easy, but certainly worth
the journey.
And I am overcome with appreciation.
