New Home | Price Place
“If you are brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.”
Brave.
It is one of those words that sounds so tough, isn’t it?
To be brave is to be powerful, strong, resilient.
Right?
When we said goodbye to Price Acres, our home for seven years, I did not feel brave.
I felt sad.
I have grieved this home, this life that we had built, with much sadness over the past six months. Even though I knew we had made the right decision, it still wasn’t easy. It definitely didn’t feel brave.
Our house sold not once but twice in a matter of days (long story!) and it was a whirlwind of packing, cleaning, and saying goodbye. We moved in with my parents temporarily before moving into a three-bedroom studio apartment. In a matter of days, we left our home with plenty of space to run and play and found ourselves in a space that seemed very foreign. The noise from the busy road just outside our window, the smells that lingered after unsuccessfully cooking in our kitchen, and the neighbors’ footsteps heard from above…all of this, combined with the grief, caused many sleepless nights, senseless arguments, and deep, deep sadness.
Saying goodbye to Price Acres was terribly hard. But, it’s also shown my family what bravery looks like. Bravery is taking one scary step forward, into the unknown, trusting that life will keep moving, and we will get through this hard time stronger and more resilient than we started.
I can see now that we needed the winter season to rest, recover, and reset before moving forward. It’s as Katherine May writes in Wintering, “More than any other season, winter requires a kind of metronome that ticks away its darkest beats, giving us a melody to follow into spring. The year will move on no matter what, but by paying attention to it, feeling its beat, and noticing the moments of transition - perhaps even taking time to think about what we want from the next phase in the year - we can get the measure of it.”
Bravery leads to new beginnings. Little by little, over the winter months, our sadness has turned into a fresh start. And we couldn’t be more excited about what’s to come this spring.
We purchased a home in Dothan that is in one of my favorite neighborhoods, just down the street from where I grew up. This neighborhood features well-built homes, kind families, and lots of streets to walk, run, and go on family bike rides. We are close to our school, ballpark, and Target (I mean, does it get any better than that?!). Here’s something else that is super cool..we purchased this home from family friends who were downsizing. This house was a home I visited occasionally for football games when I was home from college. Never did I dream of us owning it one day but God led us here and we are so grateful!
Our new home, Price Place, was purchased in January with the intent of updating the design to fit the needs of our family of six. The home was built in the 1980s and all the bedrooms were upstairs. We’ve decided to make one of the rooms downstairs our master bedroom so the kids can have the upstairs rooms and bathrooms (we are so thankful for now having separate bathrooms for the boys and the girls!). The major home projects are adding on a master bathroom downstairs and redesigning the layout of the kitchen. Minor updates include all the basics: paint, hardware, lighting, floors. Renovations have begun and we plan to move in once the upstairs bedrooms are ready.
The family that we purchased the home from practiced hospitality with so much grace and love. As we’ve gone through the process of buying this house, I’ve realized that they too are brave. They are entrusting the home where their family made memories to us. There is weight in their decision, just like there was a heaviness to our decision to leave Price Acres. But life will reward them with a new hello too.
Bravery is a beautiful cycle of loving and letting go. For us to be brave, we have to be willing to allow the sadness in, but also recognize that we can’t sit in that season of sorrow forever. To be brave is to hope for the things unseen, the spring that is sure to come after a long winter.
Our home is just what we need for this season. We’ve already begun dreaming new dreams, climbing trees in the front yard, dipping our toes in the pool water, and have started to make this house our new home. And this never would have happened if we hadn’t chosen to be brave.
Here’s to a new season,
Christen
