Seven years ago, my spouse and I purchased our first home. We were in our mid 40s and had always lived in apartments and weird adaptive urban spaces, like an old shoe factory and a renovated hospital. It felt completely normal and a reasonable “forever home” choice then, to choose a historic loft blocks from the state Capitol and above a hip coffee shop.
We’ve loved it here, and have restored the kitchen, expanded the electrical system, replaced all the appliances, and dreamed big dreams about how to adapt it to our needs.
Which keep changing.
The needs.
We just can’t physically live here anymore, our bodies are too broken. We need different things now that we are looking into our 60s and 70s. We are in our early 50s now, and we do know this probably means decades are ahead of us. But we would like to find a place that doesn’t fight us via a (terribly fabulous and very chic) spiral staircase every day. A place we ourselves can heal from the never ending activity always present in an urban core.
I need to plant in the soil, to grow food and have a place to gather people, ideas, and resources. The world needs more bees so we’ll tend a few hives. Covid taught us that while we are each other’s best friends and can get through anything together, we also need our own spaces and the ability to be alone. We would like to sit outside together in some privacy, something that has never been a part of our lives.
Our needs have changed, but our deep love for this home we’ve made hasn’t at all.
This week, the house situation shifted as well, and we must now make 2 household moves over the next 3 months. And now, we need to make one of the most significant resource decisions of our lives: Whom we choose to sell this beloved home, and help us find the new Forever Home.
This process has already cost a friendship, and the anxiety about managing it all well is very real. These are huge changes, and frankly indicative of the kinds of decisions in front of all of us: What matters in our financial transactions? What is our complicity in the systems of property and their deep inequities? Who do we trust with that which we love? How will we create the communities we need?
All of this will change, as the future is dynamic. The present moment is also dynamic, and ripe with fullness and possibility. The only ground to be sought is within -within our hearts, within our communities, within Creation itself.
And so I will only write this: Nothing that I expected this year has happened, and almost everything that has, I could never have predicted.
Life is change.
While much is lost on this journey, much is also gained.
This is always the way.
I don’t always include my weekly prayers here, but I wrote a weekly prayer for every Monday morning. The words that emerged as I was praying feel appropriate for today as well.
Change can be scary -it almost always is to some degree. It is by its nature unknown. But we have all we need, and change is also life.