A Good and Safe Rule

Very often we hear people talk about, "Well, we are just going to move again." Or, "There isn't any point in meeting new people." "Why should I paint? We just have to paint when we leave." 

We are always looking ahead. There is always a move around the corner. No place is permanent. No home is one where you can put your sweat and time into creating a garden that you will get to enjoy three years down the road when it is matured and worth every back-breaking moment. Every friend you make you will farewell. Every unit you are in will one day no longer be "your unit." The families you consider your own will change. The people you cling to move away.

There is nothing permanent in this life.

I know that that can become difficult. I know that the moving and the changing and the starting again gets old. It makes you tired.

I read something yesterday that I had never seen before but so much of it is how I try to live my life. It was in the home of another army wife. From the framing I could tell it was a gift of some kind from a previous unit. It was so very fitting.

I don't believe in temporary homes. I strongly believe that we are a community with many homes. New Orleans is my heart. New Orleans is in my blood. Fort Campbell sits deep within me as well for far different reasons. My first homecoming was in one of its hangars. My first memorial. The birth of our first child. So much of that post is very much my home. Fort Benning allowed me to meet my husband, putting him just close enough to his home that our paths could cross. Three years later it introduced me to some incredible women who were walking the same path at the same time. It afforded me a handful of strong friendships. That Infantry-blue-blooded post holds a piece of home for us too.

Every place is temporary but home is carried with you. Every place you are brought to, every path set before you, is meant to become part of your "home". Yes, walking away from where you invest your time and your heart is painful. Yes, leaving the friends you make - or having them leave you - never gets easier. But it makes you love greater. I would take that heartbreak over numbness any day. It makes you understand the value of goodness and compassion and kindness.

The more invested you are, the more of you that you put into your parts of home, the more you find where you belong, the less temporary it all becomes. Every place this journey has taken us is carried along the way. Every house, every neighbor, every farewell, every welcome home, finds a place in the next. 

It is a good and safe rule to soujourn in EVERY place as if you meant to spend your life there.

Because you are spending your life there. Every place gets part of your life, but every part of your life will carry that place. 

LIVE in it. INVEST in it. Claim every second of it.

Spend you life, wherever you are, wherever you go.

Spend your life, LIVE your life, and love every home along the way.