Goodbye, Hello.

Six weeks ago, when Robert proposed, a million questions ran through my head (whether or not to marry him wasn’t one of them). Should we get married before his deployment or when he gets back? Where can we go for the honeymoon? Will he still love me when he figures out how many pairs of shoes I actually own?

After a short discussion about keeping one house as rental property, we decided to live in his house and sell mine, eliminating the hassle of renters, repairs, and the like.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been slowly packing up my little palace and preparing my house to sell. And, if we’re just being honest, some of the moments haven’t been very pretty. There may or may not have been tears.

As I look back on my 7+ years in that house, I remember the big decisions that were made, and the little ones. That house was “home base” where I could run and hide behind locked door and closed blinds when I needed to be “olly olly oxen free” from the troubles of the world. It was the place I had total control over the remote, the refrigerator, and everything in between. It’s where I learned how to fix a running toilet, restring a weed eater, and make a pretty fantastic lasagna. It’s where I finally figured out that it’s OK to stand up for myself and to speak my mind as long as I try to do it with tact and grace. It’s where I learned that it’s not the end of the world if I make a mess, burn dinner, or put three holes in the wall trying to hang one picture. It’s where I learned to try new things even if I’m not very good at them at first. It’s where I learned that I can do a lot more than I ever thought possible. It wasn’t always easy and there were numerous calls to Dad for the mechanical and countless calls to Mom and Jaime for the emotional but in the end, in that house, I took a look at being an independent grown-up and thought, if only for a moment, “I got this.” In that house, I somehow just knew that everything would be alright. I guess you could say that house is where I came into my own; in a lot of ways, in my adult life, it’s the house that built me.

But now it’s time to let that house build someone else. The For Sale sign is in the yard; the memories are all packed away and I’m ready to hand over my keys to someone who needs that house as much now as I did then.

As often as I’ve looked back over the past few weeks, I’ve also spent some time looking forward and I realize that I’m not really losing the HOUSE I had for seven years, I’m simply trading it in for a HOME I’ll have for a lifetime with a man who understands the difference.

Goodbye, House. Hello, HOME.