Two Worlds

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.