Things I'll Miss....and Things I Won't Miss

All 3 kids are in bed (the 2 older ones are not sleeping but at least they're slightly quiet giving me a little breather) and I was reminiscing about when we moved into our current house. I've learned so much through this house-it's kind of hard to put it into words but I'll give it a shot.

Some things I'll miss about this house:
*The way that it made me appreciate the small things. It led to a simpler life for us and I'm grateful for that. We didn't NEED all that we had before....a small space was enough.

*The way it made me contemplate hospitality. Soon after we had Tristen, my husband wanted to be intentional about hospitality. My excuse was always, "We don't have enough room" and my thoughts were very "me-centered" (is my house good enough? Will people judge our current situation? Will I appear poor?) My husband and a sermon from John Piper(I think it was him but it's been so long ago I could be wrong!) made me reevaluate hospitality. The sermon told about a sweet older lady who lived in an apartment and felt the Lord's leading to invite new couples to her home for Sunday dinner. She could have used all the excuses that I had but instead, she obeyed and after a few weeks, she had SO many people in her small apartment....she didn't shy away from inviting people because of the space she had. It was huge in my life when I finally came to this realization. Just the other day, we crammed 9 high school guys into our small dining room to play games. And you know what? I heard laughter and good talks going on.....I pray our house has been used for God's kingdom and I'm so grateful for the way it has challenged me to be more hospitable.

*The coziness of having all 3 bedrooms close together.

*The late night feedings with each one of my kids. Connor is already sleeping through the night so the days of multiple night feedings are gone and I slightly miss it :)

*The amount of time it took to clean my house top to bottom! It could be done in less than an hour which is SO great when we had children!

*The way it made me deal with conflict. It's a small space so you kind of HAVE to deal with things out in the open since there's nowhere to run to :) I think I needed that in life.

*Having to be REALLY creative with space. It challenged me and I think (hope!) I'm a better organizer because of it.

Some things I won't miss:
*Days like today where I'm trying to keep my kids quiet while my husband sleeps. Something I didn't mention before is that the full time job he took is actually the overnight shift. My husband tries to sleep during the day in a house that is loud....needless to say my husband is pretty sleep deprived at the moment.

*Not having any personal space. We were planning out our new home and I was dreaming about how much I'm going to enjoy having space that I can actually breathe in again! We have such tight quarters at the moment that we don't have any place just to have to ourselves.

*Giving my kids a bath in the shower :) HA! Bet you didn't know that about us....my kids have had maybe 5 baths in an actual bathtub (when they would visit grandparents). We only have a shower in our house so we have had to makeshift bathtime for 3 years. I will definitely not miss that!

*Having my clothes closet under my bed :) We don't have a real closet in our house so I've had my clothes under the bed for the last 4 years that we've lived here. So very excited to have not one but many closets in our new home.

*Living on a busy street. I know I won't always be able to protect them and I need to entrust my kids to the Lord but living on a busy street has stolen a bit of joy from our household. We can't let our kids run and play outside because we fear they will run into the street...again, something I won't miss :)

But, this has been such a good house to us. There were so many uncertain times in our life in the last 4 years and this house offered us stability. There were lots of tears shed here but many MANY happy and joyful times too. I'll look back fondly on it and remember our first few years with the kids and the coziness that it brought to our lives. It was a blessing and we will miss this place.