Right here. Right now.

We've been here for 8 days now and there have been so many good things and so much adjustment at the same time. When you're tired and weary from weeks on the go and a big move-in and are struggling to get a good night's sleep, it's really easy to focus on the hard parts, to not absorb the good around you, even when the good is sooooo good. 

It has been a pretty quiet week actually. There are two "wings", or atriums as they're called here, that go off from the common house in this place, and we have about 10 or so units in our atrium. Of these 10, there are a number of people who are either out of town or ones who keep to themselves for different reasons. There are some, however, who are around and who we've met and chatted with. We've sat out in a little nook filled with cozy chairs and sofas in the common space just outside our unit in the evening and had neighbours come and join us, chatting late into the night (whispering when the quiet hour arrived). We've propped our door open and had people poke their heads in to say hi, give us bits of info, ask us how we're doing. We've seen our girls run off into the common house with other kids (or in search of other kids) and not seen them for long periods of time, knowing they're safe (the building is locked) and having loads of fun with their new friends (and possibly getting into mischief with said new friends....hmmm). We've had good moments.

There have also been hard ones. I'm trying to recuperate from the move and the stress it has put on my body and for the past few days have been experiencing low blood pressure and faintness. I hope to see this pass as I get more sleep and gain more of a sense of normal. We've both had times of needing to close the door and the blinds and shut ourselves into our cave, trying to gain a sense of it being a safe hiding place when we're feeling "homesick" for our city by the sea, or our friends back where we came from, or from the overwhelm of a huge change. I've escaped to my bedroom which feels like a gentle and peaceful sanctuary on the upper floor, away from the door and the people outside, away from the noise and the overwhelm. 

There are gifts though. We are seeing them already. This God we have been following is already doing such good. We see His presence in the people who care so well for each other, and now for us. We see His presence in the small things like the way that I feel when I walk into my room - that it's a safe haven - that I feel that He is there and comforting. We see Him in the gift this community is. We see Him in the UTTERLY RANDOM way that Pito happened to meet a little boy on her walkie talkie the other day, who lives in the next subdivision, who happens to also be 6, who happens to homeschool, who happens to go to church in the area, who happened to drive by with his family today while we waited outside for them, in the pouring rain, just to wave and meet this new family that may very well become friends. We see God everywhere. In the rain and the peace that I felt as I walked to the compost this afternoon. In the tangible taste of Him I sense on my early morning walks. In the music Ryan and I play and sing in the evenings. He is here and He is good, and He has brought us here. May he have much good work for us to do.

Tonight there was a "welcome feast" for us and some other new people in the community. It was a potluck and everyone was to bring something except us newbies. :) We were SO well fed! Wow! And so many people came out! It was a gift to be able to see so many in one place, to chat with new friends and to witness our new community in action. What lovely, warm, welcoming and caring people! Really! This is what they DO. They care for one another. They live in community because they don't want to be alone and isolated. They want to know their neighbours. Co-housing is revolutionary and completely ordinary all at once. In our culture, we can so easily be isolated in our homes. We drive into our garages and can choose whether or not to engage with those around us, and how much to invite them into our lives. Townhouse complexes have the potential for more connection simply because there are shared walls, but even then, garages hide the people so often. Everything is set up to be private and isolated. Co-housing, in this sense, is really wild! I mean, to live in a building that deliberately doesn't have garages, where you need to enter your unit by passing through the common space where your neighbours are often around; it stands in contrast. (There's a joke we keep hearing that it takes an hour to take your garbage out here....because you meet so many neighbours along the way!) At the same time, I feel that co-housing is really not that strange or different. It's kind of like a townhouse complex, but we've put a glass roof over the "street" between the units, and the "clubhouse" happens to be attached to the "street". I don't know, there's something pretty....normal about seeing and knowing our neighbours.

I should be clear here too, that isolation is a lifestyle choice. Yes, many homes are set up in a way that encourages it, encourages constant privacy, isolation, living independent from the people around you, but even in that environment one can choose to build community around them. That is what we did back in our city by the sea. Remember our next door neighbours? We miss them dreadfully! I wish we could transplant them to this place, add them to the community, keep them close. My sister and her family are another example of living against the isolation factor. They know their neighbours. They get into their neighbour's lives. They share time and coffee and meals and conversations with them. 

But back to this place. I bet you'd like to see what it actually looks like, eh? Yeah? Wanna? Okay, here you go. xoxo Until next time.

 The South Atrium, where we live. This is a picture of the "street" between the units, covered in glass so as to allow daylight to enter, but not precipitation! At the very end are the glass doors into the common house.

The view from the atrium into our front window.

Our front door!

Our new home! That door goes out into the atrium.

 Looking in from the back deck.

 Our bedroom sanctuary. See what I mean? Peaceful. I just want to climb into bed and...zzzzzzz.

 Hard at work making pizza dough, with little Pony peeking over the edge of the counter.

From the kitchen sink, looking out to the atrium. 

 This was posted for a day or two before the welcome dinner.

The common house, taken from the front doors. 

The common house dining room. 

A nice place in the common house to sit and play piano late at night. 

(I just tested it out. Yup, it's nice.)

A New World

It has been five days since we moved in to this co-housing community. I can't tell if it feels like a year or an hour. It's been great in some ways, overwhelming in others, utterly shaking in some and inspiring in others. In short, we are feeling a lot of emotions!

It often seems to turn out, fortunately, that Ryan and I have our panic moments at different times. The days leading up to our move-in were tough for Ryan. He was second guessing our decisions, was worried about this co-housing community, wasn't sure it was a good move. Anxiety was pulling at him, bringing him back to the basic arguments against our big changes that we had to fight through early on. 

Then we moved in, and he relaxed. No, he got excited. He started saying, "I want to meet people!" and "I want to get out there and get involved!" Cue my turn for panic.

So I started strong. I was excited to move in. Those days of Ryan's heightened anxiety were a wonderful reprieve for me from nearly three weeks of feeling low and disconnected from our vision, from God, from really anything at all. I was weary from packing and moving out; I was missing our neighbours; I was worrying that we wouldn't see our good friends who we were moving away from as often as I hoped; I was sad about the loss of our next door neighbours (who we dropped in on a good number of times after we left!); and I was not handling "homelessness" very well. 

I felt particularly ashamed of that last one. I am indeed a rich westerner who has been privileged enough to never have been homeless in her life. It made me think of those who don't have a home, or a permanent home, or who are forced out of their homes. Not easy for them. And it was not easy for me.

Another stark and shameful realization for me: the fact that I REALLY MISSED MY COMPUTER. Seriously. I felt disjointed and un-collected. I felt like my grounding computer that had all the information I needed on it was no longer at my disposal and I was just flailing around without all that I needed. It's so weird. What the heck? Aren't I the one who's always talking about cutting back, NAY, cutting off technology? I know I go too far to the extreme sometimes, but honestly, it was shocking how hard it was to be away from the computer. 

Okay, but on Tuesday we moved in, people in the community dropped in here and there, we met some kids and our girls were as happy as pie running amok with them all, with this unexpected freedom of having the run of the entire building and property! Honestly! I thought we were meaning to DOWNSIZE, but this has just added such a huge dimension to our living space, and particularly to the girls' play space!

But of course, I started panicking. Yep, as Ryan relaxed and got excited, I took my turn. Worries. Homesickness. Exhaustion. It all caught up to me and I felt shaken for a few days. I would close the door into the community, lower the blinds, and take a deep breath. It felt good to hide in certain moments. It also felt good to open the door and walk down to check our mailbox, to be out, to say hello to those I passed by. Thankfully, I'm feeling better today. But you know what that means...Ryan's starting to feel shaken again.

Sigh! It's a wild time. It's a good, but wild time. Our place is almost unpacked. Ryan goes back to work in the morning. Life will take on a more regular pace for another week before we head off out of town again on holidays the following week. But I think we're going to like it here. I think it will be challenging and great. 

In the next post I'll give you all a bit of a tour and low-down on what things are like here! Woo hoo!!

Exodus

Ohmygoodness.

We have moved out! It has happened! We have left our beautiful home in the city by the sea and spent three long (LONG) weeks wandering around, waiting for the possession date at our new place in the co-housing community. 

I won't lie. This has been no easy task. Even with all the pre-purging we did, there was still a bunch of stuff to give away or throw out. For instance, our lawn mower. I mean, if we aren't going to have a grassy lawn, then why would we need one? We are certainly not interested in just keeping things around "just because". And so we sorted, and worked through the horridly full garage (9 boxes of girls' clothes I gave to the thrift store!!!), and packed and packed and packed. It was gratifying to experience packing up a house that had been well purged. We really didn't have LOADS of stuff, and hardly anything that wasn't used regularly or often. Woo hoo! Satisfying!

The girls went through many emotions. It has been a tricky thing to walk them through all this change, but all in all, they have really taken to it well. They are pretty happy kids and I feel like they trust that we have all our best interests at heart, not just ours as adults. They seem to feel safe even in the midst of the change, but that doesn't eliminate the occurrence of moody days, or fighting more, or regression in the potty training, depending on which girl we're talking about. These changes aren't always easy.

So after a little road trip, a week of RVing, and a handful of days at the inlaws' house between each of our temporary abodes, we are now lying in bed, nearly ready to turn out the lights and go to sleep, to wake in the morning and MOVE IN to our new, somewhat unusual, definitely exciting home! We are so ready, filled with nervousness and eagerness, which take turns churning our stomachs and never seem to quite leave us alone. 

What will it be like? We don't know yet! All our guesses are really just theory! 

Our challenge over the next few months will be learning how to really live out our values intentionally, however we see fit. The family time, the community building, the simple living, the living within our understanding of God's presence, the intentionality, they all need to continue to grow in us. It would be so easy to simply forget it all and embrace this move as just one more big change that will distract us from our antsy-panties, but we cannot. In a lot of ways it's a new beginning. 

And so, tomorrow it all starts, and continues. There are new beginnings every day. This is one, and we embrace it!