Toto, there’s no place like…

Home.

Here it is, our final 7 days in this place that we have nestled in for the past 10 years. I have both hated living here, and loved it. The walls have heard my screams of anger, and soaked up my tears of joy. The wind has whistled down the chimney and wrapped its thundering around me. The sun has shone through the dusty panes and filled me with the warmth of its comfort.

Now I face leaving, I realise I am happy here. As a family, a huge, scary adventure awaits us. It’s exciting yet daunting, and a part of me wants to remain here, where it is safe, where I know my neighbours, where I can chat in the street, where I can turn my key in the lock and know I am home.

Home for me, however, is more than bricks, wallpaper and paint. Although, God help me, it’s had it’s fair share of re-painting and papering as we prepared the house to go onto ‘the market’. Rather, home is about the people who pop in for a coffee and a natter, it’s about snuggling up under a blanket to watch a film, it’s about dashing out in a downpour to rescue the washing from the line, making coffee in the early morning light, listening to the rain fall on the conservatory roof. Home is about love.

A verse from the Bible circles round in my head ‘where you go, there I shall go also’. Ruth gave up her home to follow and be with the people she loved. And so I, too, follow. The purpose I will have when I get there will be unknown.

So, as I prepare to follow my husband to Yorkshire I have only 7 days to seek refuge here.

Then, I will be brave.