Nomad's Pub

The Art of Settling Down

New York.

A place of my own.

Moving in this week has shown me several things, or at least, reminded me of them...

Firstly, a move is always exciting. It's like Christmas right now, unpacking all these boxes and trunks and tubs of treasures that I have had locked away in storage, waiting for me to come claim them and love them again.

Secondly, a move "back" that you know will not be exactly the same as before is not necessarily a bad or painful thing, provided you keep your expectations correctly in order. There is, after all, hopefully something good which you have left behind you and may step back into. As is the case for me here, quite happily. It is good to be reunited with friends and enjoy them, even as you do miss those you have left behind somewhere else.

It is good for me to see that I do know someplace in the world. It's so nice to go down main street and visit my friends house and help make dinner there... To go up the winding road I run on and visit newly married friends in their cute little apartment--where other friends I know once lived. It is so wonderful to go walking through the woods and over the hills and across the fields, picking wildflowers and sticking my toes in the pond and feeling the wind in my hair and singing and enjoying being alone in the beauty of it all. I am so happy to go sit at the table with my host family again, chatting over some delicious treat or drink and knowing I am loved and welcomed and wanted. Knowing that I have people to love on and come back to.

It is so exciting to live off campus, in my "own" place rather than college housing; a place that I chose and I rent. It's cozy and unique (unlike the look-alike campus housing), and it's going to be like a magic world when I decorate it for Christmas! Or the wildflowers I have here already, celebrating this season from their vases scattered around the place (tastefully, I must add).

I have now permission to paint as I wish, and will be doing so this very coming week--quite exciting, really. There is something special about changing a place; about designing it to your taste and then doing the work of it yourself. A labour of love makes a place of love.

This being, of course, the first time I have a place of my own... I am inspired to make it quite homey--despite the fact I'll only be living there for about 9 months. Then again... nine months is longer thanI've lived anywhere in the last two or more years, so that really is not too bad!

Now I just have to...
--choose and buy paint
--get a throw-rug for my floor
--get another bookcase (I have so many books here--I never knew!)
--a desk lamp and a stand up lamp

and of course... buy some groceries so I stop living on popcorn each meal! :)

Settling down is, I think, an art in itself. You can be artistic with moving in; with decorating and arranging; with the foods you make... But the act of settling down is art in itself; how you arrange your emotions; what you let yourself see; how you choose to love. I'm choosing the colours and setting the tones for the painting that this year of my life will be for me to look back on and remember, and I'm choosing to pick up that brush and paint. These months will not be a blank canvass: I intend to live in the fulness and joy God intends for His people. I think as long as I look at it that way, I really will enjoy these next few months.

posted by Lada @ 3:43 PM