Lately I’ve been reflecting on what makes a place feel like home. Our family moved from Toronto to Pittsburgh this summer and I’ve found that the act of “settling in” is made up of a myriad pile of puzzle pieces. They come in a jumble of shapes and sizes and when painstakingly put together (in any order), they somehow make “home” happen. The big ones that spring to mind are these:

Bringing my family with me
How lucky am I that I get to bring my husband and children with me wherever I go? They say home is where the heart is and it’s true. Making memories with my family in our new home makes it feel like we all belong there. 

Annoying bureaucratic “grown up” chores
In my humble opinion, this is the worst (but necessary) part of moving. New driver’s licenses, finding a new bank, new doctor, new dentist, school paperwork, transferring information from the last place you lived to another, letting EVERYONE know your new address…does just reading this stress you out? It sure has that effect on me so let’s move on to the next category.

Figuring out where staple places are located
The grocery store (not to mention how to navigate said grocery store), the library, the best spots for buying clothes and shoes for your family, a hair dresser…all the essential “will visit regularly” places. This is Step 1 of this piece of the puzzle. Step 2 is that glorious moment when you go out to run an errand and don’t need a GPS. 

Discovering local treasures
Local parks, restaurants, date night destinations, zoos, museums, theatres, eating any signature foods that your new area is famous for (Fries on salad, anyone?). Soaking up local culture and charm always makes a place feel more like home to me, as if by sampling the treasures, I get properly adopted by my new city. 

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29: 11-13

Tis the season for all sorts of moving forward. The weather is getting warmer. School years are coming to a close. COVID vaccines are inching many parts of the world towards a shadow of “normal.” I personally know lots of people who will soon be moving on to new jobs and homes—our family included.  These times of transition always seem to tug the heart in two directions—looking forward to new adventures and the ache of what we will miss about the here and now. Leaving the familiar is always daunting, isn’t it? 

In March, Tania Alden shared an article about the simple power of intentional gratitude and how it connects us to heaven. I’m finding that standing on the brink of a big move has me counting my blessings twofold. For months now, I’ve had a running list of people, places, and things that I will miss about our lives here in Toronto: 

These days the textile arts seem to be the Lord’s preferred vessel for lessons He wants to share with me. In my last article, I wrote about how knitting a scarf for my son helped me process the pain of pregnancy loss. Recently, I have been trying my hand at needle felting, and once again this simple act of creation has provided some clarity I’ve really needed, which I would like to share with you. 

Needle felting is a comfortingly uncomplicated process. One simply has to stab wool with a sharp needle until the fibers bind together into the desired shape. It certainly requires some practice and skill to craft felted creations of any detail and it is very easy to poke yourself if you’re not careful, but the essential process really is just stabbing wool repeatedly. 

It doesn’t stretch my imagination much to identify with that fledgling tuft of wool. That’s really how we start out, isn’t it? Shapeless. In need of direction and purpose. Being in a soft and fuzzy newborn state is lovely, but we aren’t supposed to linger there for long. I love that the term used for loose wool fibers is “roving” wool, as if the fluff could wander off or get lost if Someone didn’t do something with it. As if it were made to be gathered together into something new. 

The day after losing my unborn child, I started knitting a scarf. It was for my three year old son and he had selected a pumpkin spice orange yarn–the kind of orange that warms you up when you look at it. He had picked this yarn out well over a year ago, but I had barely started knitting before the project got lost in the shuffle of holiday hubbub. But now, in my helplessness and grief after delivering a baby long before he was ready, I felt a sudden urge to make something–something I knew I could finish. I desperately needed to feel productive while spending most of my time in bed and on the couch so my body could heal. 

I had selected the number of stitches determining the width of the scarf long ago, and as I started to knit, I could see that the scarf would engulf my little guy’s neck and probably his face too. Not only that, but it was so wide that I might not have enough yarn to make it long enough to wrap around his neck securely. But I was stubborn. I kept going. There’d be enough yarn, I kept telling myself, as the soft orange creation got longer and longer. 

But not long enough. 

I had nearly used up my one and only skein of this cozy orange yarn when I tossed the knitting needles aside in frustration. I had indeed made the scarf too wide. I didn’t have enough yarn to finish. I would have to undo a day’s worth of knitting and start over. Tears of failure spilled out in bitter heaves. Why had I so foolishly convinced myself that this would work out? Of course my frustration wasn’t really about the scarf.