Not Yet
Places
When I say place, I do not only mean the town.
I mean my heart. I mean my circle. I mean the community I am still reaching for, the home I am trying to make feel like one, the tribe I have not fully found yet. I mean the version of my life I can almost see from where I am standing, close enough to feel real, far enough that I have not touched it yet.
All of it is the place I am learning to be in.
And all of it is asking something of me that I am still figuring out how to give.
I am curious about this area. Genuinely curious. Things are changing here. Thousands of jobs are projected to arrive, new people, new energy, something being built that was not here before. I watch that with real interest. Good or bad? Maybe we arrived in the middle of a story that has not finished yet.
I want to stay open to that.
We came here with open hearts. We are still here with open hearts, though some days it costs more than others to keep them open. We show up. We try. We look for the kindness. And there is kindness here, real and unexpected, and generous, that I do not want to rush past in my hurry to avoid pain and want something else.
Some people here have been so incredibly lovely to us. A woman who invited us to her holiday table, like the invitation, was never in question. A small group learning who we are, slowly and genuinely, asking real questions and remembering the answers. People who saw us and moved toward us instead of away. I think about those people more than they know. I will not let the hard ones take up all the space the good ones deserve.
But I would not be writing honestly if I left out the other part.
There is ugliness here that hurts my heart.
It did not arrive dramatically. The first time it came sideways, almost polite, and I stood there afterward wondering if I had read it wrong. The second time was less subtle. A person with a certain kind of weight behind them, a certain kind of reach, making something very clear without saying it plainly.
I did not fall apart in front of my family. I held it together the way you learn to hold things together when other people need you to. But alone, when nobody was watching, I cried. The kind of crying that is not just about one moment but about everything that moment represents. Everything it costs. Everything, it, should not have to cost.
I sat with it. I prayed over it. And then I got up. Because that is what we do.
What I keep returning to is a question I cannot fully answer yet: what if there is a purpose in this season? What if this place, as complicated and unexpected as it is, is asking something of me that I am only beginning to understand? I do not say that to perform peace, I do not feel. I say it because I genuinely believe that sometimes we are placed somewhere not for our comfort but for something larger than our comfort.
If this is a calling, I need to be able to live here. Give here. Be safe here.
I am working on all three.
My husband does not quit. That is the simplest and most complete thing I know about him.
He is a man of deep faith, though it does not always look the way church culture expects it to look. His faith is not tidy or predictable. It is steadfast in the way that real things are steadfast, which is to say it has looked messy at times, uncertain at times, and it has held anyway. He is loyal to his family in a way that is becoming rare. When the season is hard, and the ground feels uncertain, he finds the next right thing, and he moves toward it. Not because he is not tired. He is tired. But faith and loyalty do not wait for conditions to be perfect, and neither does he.
I watch him, and I think: that is what it looks like to keep going.
I dream about more for this family. More kindness in the world around us. More opportunity. A circle that reflects who we really are. I hold that dream with open hands and an open heart. Because I am also genuinely, truly open to being surprised. Maybe this is the place. Maybe this is home. Maybe the lovely people multiply, and what feels uncertain becomes something solid.
I am not writing anything off. I am just being honest about where I am while I wait to see where I am going.
Leonard settled into this season without needing to understand it. He picked his spot, claimed it, and decided it was his. Miley found the sun. Zoey learned the particular sounds of this place and stopped being startled by them.
They did not wait until they were sure. They just settled in.
Maybe that is the only way through a season like this. Stay open. Accept the holiday dinner invitation. Show up to the small group. Let the good people be good to you without holding back because the bad ones hurt you. Look at the horizon and wonder what is being built, here and in you, and trust that not yet is not the same as never.
I watched something tonight that I will not forget. A person faced something frightening and ugly and walked straight to a microphone anyway. Did not hide. Did not collapse. Said the show goes on. Recommended that the people in that room not let one bad moment swallow an entire evening.
I thought: that is the lesson. Right there.
Bad does not get to win just because it showed up. Ugly does not get to cancel good. Fear does not get the final word. You straighten up, you walk back to the room, and you let the show go on.
That is what I am trying to do. In this town, in this season, in this complicated and unexpected chapter. I am not letting the bad cancel the good. I am not letting the hard have the last word. I am showing up to the room every day and recommending that the show go on.
I am here. I am trying. I am watching something take shape that I do not fully understand yet.
That feels, on the best days, like exactly enough.
The Dog-Eared Life publishes on Sundays. If you have ever been in a place that was not quite yours yet and wondered if there was a reason, you are in exactly the right place.