The Story of a House

Home renovation, they call it.
But it’s not just walls and wiring, not really. It’s layers.
Layers of life, layers of time. There’s a kind of holy whisper, a promise that pulses through the floorboards and ugly wall-paper and broken lights. When I heard that whisper for the first time, I knew this was going to be our house. I saw a place in need of repair, an experience waiting to be discovered–a “forever, for now” home for my family, waiting to be created. 

This is not just renovation, I’m guessing.
It’s ritual, maybe.
It’s recovering something of my own soul, perhaps.

Last night, my daughter and I spent our first night in our new home. We woke up with a long to-do list, paint and tools and curious hearts. The soul of this house has settled into its corners. It waits in the cracks. You can hear it creaking in the stairs. As we began to dust and pull away layers of old wall paper borders, the soul of our house began to speak. I am excited to keep listening. To keep trying to translate the history of these walls into a treasury of tales that will bring meaning to our future. 

Who knew that a sledge hammer could begin a creative unfolding?
I believe there is poetry inside this plaster. I sense a longing in the floor boards. And I already feel my own story rising to meet it–the story of this house. 

We gave our new home a name: Cloudfall Pines.

I’ll be sharing the story here, a little bit and from time to time. 
As I dream our kitchen into a haven.
When I transform our hallway into a gallery.
When the bedrooms become downy nests.
It might be beautiful. It will be messy. It might get weird. But somehow, Cloudfall Pines is calling me to strip my life back to the studs. To trust that a living legacy courses up from the foundation; and to refurbish some of the outdated adornments of my psyche.

I am creating a new relationship with “home.”