Home sweet home

In less than one week, we will be moving into our first house! I can hardly believe this is happening, but yet, I feel so at peace. God has been doing wonderful things in our lives, and He really is extravagant.

I will tell you all about the house when we're there (with pictures, too, of course!) but for now, I want to just want to tell you about how God set the whole thing up!

When Patrick and I made the decision to move back to Nova Scotia, we were in the hospital after Noah's birth. My dear husband was unemployed, we had university debt to last us, well, a looong time, and here we were, cradling this innocent gift of God who was relying on us to supply his every need. It was very humbling, to say the least.

We knew we had a wonderful community in Barry's Bay, and we even thought it likely that Patrick could find some work there, but it just didn't seem right for us to move there. Not when we knew we could live in Halifax and be so close to both sets of parents. Yet it felt like a huge leap of faith, because Ontario had really been our home for so long. We had made so many friends there, and really went from young adulthood to manhood and womanhood there.

Still, Nova Scotia was home.

And what a wonderful decision we made. While we definitely missed our friends in Ontario (we still do!), having Noah come to know and love his family here is a wonderful thing to behold. Couple that with the intensity of the first year of mothering (something I am sure many women understand but only my own mother seemed fully equipped to help me through), I can hardly imagine living any where else.

God had our deepest needs and desires at heart when He prompted us to come here.

Still, it was a difficult year. The isolating experience of mothering (and fathering, too, I think -- although on a much smaller scale) made me feel like we were still lacking something. A real community. A group of close-knit friends that we could share our experiences of parenting, people who were trying to raise their family in a Catholic way, who weren't interested in the material culture's way of living out family life.

These people actually abound around here, but it's hard to coordinate times together. Plus, how do you approach someone for something like this? "Hey you're Catholic and have kids. Wanna be a community?"

When we came back from Ontario on our recent visit, we were really overwhelmed by the beauty of the families (once again) in Barry's Bay. Patrick works from home, so it wouldn't be a problem for us to move there, or Siberia really, if we so choose. We questioned God once again, "How are we to live out a Catholic family life without other young Catholic families to help us?"

We also had had enough of our apartment situation. We dreamed of buying a house, even a small fixer-upper, so that we could just have a place of our own. But we needed to know where. More specifically, what province.

So we decided to pray a Novena. Patrick pointed out that if we were indeed going to end our lease, we had to do so in about 2 weeks, so a nine-day novena seemed like a long time to wait to make such an important decision. So we chose instead a one day novena to the Infant of Prague. Every hour on the hour for nine hours, we would pray about whether God was calling us to buy a house in Nova Scotia.

(In case you haven't noticed, we like to be intense around here.)

We prayed that novena on Father's Day, actually (not particularly because it had much to do with Father's Day, but because we wanted to pray our novena on a Sunday). We included Noah in praying, too, and even asked him what he thought God was telling us. {We want to include him on big decisions, too, and we want to model discernment for him. Kids his age learn mainly by imitation, so we just got him to join in.}

By that night, we both really felt it was best for us to live closer to our families. Our leaning had always been in that direction, but now we were ready to put the Barry's Bay fantasy to rest; this would be our home, and God would give us our community as He saw fit, when He saw fit.

So we contacted our real estate agent the following day. She sent us some listings, and we were intrigued by one particular house in a town we had never heard of.

East. Chezzetcook.

Where exactly is that, we wondered? But according to the listing, it was only 20 minutes from Dartmouth and 10 minutes from all amenities.

The very next evening, we finished supper early and so decided to take a drive out to 'the middle of nowhere' and look at this house.

We drove up, and saw that it was right across the street from the Church. Right across the street! As silly as it sounds, I knew this was to be our home as we pulled up into the driveway. We didn't even go inside. I just knew.

Come Friday we were signing our offer. I know, crazy, right?

But really, this house has everything we could have hoped for.

I'll elaborate more soon, I swear. For now, though, I need to pack like a madwoman.