Making Room: One Year In Mississippi

Yesterday marked one year in Mississippi.

One year.

When I look back, I am shocked at how easily the courage came to move here. There were moments of fear, but there was deep certainty—a knowing I cannot articulate.

I needed space.
I needed healing that only space can bring.

It’s funny. I never, ever thought I’d leave Alabama.

Four days after I moved in, there were boxes everywhere.

It was absolute chaos...

people coming and going...
people unpacking...
people building a fence...
people hanging TVs.

And in the middle of all of that, I wrote,

“It is starting to look like a home, and it already feels like one.”

Four days.

After 51 years in Alabama...
it took four days for Mississippi to start to feel like home.

Truthfully, I thought I knew what this move was about.
But when I look back, I think I knew just enough.

Just enough to come.

I have lived an entire year here now.

Four seasons.

I've watched the trees change colors,
lose their leaves,
and grow them back again.

I've watched the light change.
I've watched goslings grow into geese.
I’ve seen more deer than I have in my entire lifetime.

I've met Urkel the turtle,
Fernando the frog,
and Catherine the fox.

Every morning and evening, I drive past the lake.

And it still gets me.

Some mornings, there is mist hovering over the water.
Sometimes there are ducks everywhere.

Yesterday, on the eve of this anniversary, I looked around, and I was just overwhelmed with gratitude.

I am so grateful for this little spot of creation that God has allowed me to live in.

Sometimes I think I don't deserve this.
And the truth is, I don't.

But maybe that's the thing about grace.

You don't earn it.

You receive it.

And this year has felt like receiving.

What brought me here and what keeps me here are not the same thing.
What keeps me here is a life I could not have imagined before I came.

It's the lake.
The geese.
It's three dogs and a screened porch.

It's knowing where the afternoon light falls
and watching sunrises from the back porch.
It's knowing where the birds gather,
where the rain pools,
how freaking, insanely hot it is here,
and realizing that in a place where I knew almost no one a year ago—
I belong.

I belong here.

Just me.

Well, me and Deacon...and Parker...and Posey.
And that is enough.

Maybe that's what I needed to learn first.

Because for a long time—and especially this year—so much of my life was turned inward.

There was a lot to understand,
a lot to grieve,
a lot to heal,
a lot to untangle with God.

And I think some seasons require that.

Sometimes God does deep work underground where nobody can see it.

You're not producing much.
You're not reaching outward very far.
You're just growing roots.

Maybe that's what this first year has been.

I uprooted myself from soil where I had grown for five decades and trusted God enough to plant me somewhere else.

And then the roots began to grow.

While I was making a home room by room...
God was making roots and rooms inside me.

I was reading in Exodus this morning and thinking about the Israelites in the wilderness. They were far from the home they knew, and they longed for it. They longed for it even when it was a home of bondage and slavery.

God uprooted them and took them into the wilderness, where the landscape was barren and their future uncertain.

And God gave them manna.
Just enough for that day.

When they tried to save it because they were afraid there wouldn't be enough tomorrow, it spoiled. They had to learn to trust that enough manna would be there for them the next day.

Can you imagine?

And maybe that is another way to describe this first year for me.

While the move has been tremendously wonderful, it has also been mentally draining.

My work is mentally draining.
Learning new roads is mentally draining.
Learning new routines and remembering where you put something a year ago is apparently mentally draining.

Finding a new doctor,
a new dentist,
a new everything...

is mentally draining.

Add to it that my mom died three weeks after I moved here,
menopause stole my sleep like a thief,
and we’ve had two significant org changes at work, and it has just been, well...
mentally draining.

But God gave me manna.

Just enough for each day.

Enough to grieve.
Enough to work.
Enough to heal.
Enough to find my way home.

And lately, I think He is showing me something else:

There is enough manna to look outward.

Honestly, I noticed it first at the house.
Instead of working on rooms, I have been able to move outside.

I started thinking about porches and planters.

A Listening Porch.
A Conversation Porch.
A Living Room Porch.
A Stargazing Porch.

I'm thinking about chairs and gardens and places where people can sit.

I’m building planters and thinking about hospitality.
I’m thinking about sharing the words God has given me.
I’m thinking about community.

And then I noticed it at work.

Instead of thinking only about task lists, I’ve started thinking about people.

Who needs encouragement today?
Who needs to hear something kind?
Where can I give away a little of the marvelously lavish love God has given me?

Suddenly, all of those things seem connected.

God made room for me here one year ago.

First, He gave me room to heal.
Room to belong.
Room to grow roots.

And now maybe He's teaching me what the room was for:
others.

And so, as I move into my second year of calling Mississippi home, maybe the invitation is simply to keep receiving the manna with open hands...

and then give some of it away.

By encouraging somebody.
By writing something.

I can pull up another chair,
or set the table,
or make a ridiculous sign that reads, “The Conversation Porch is Open,”
because I’m preparing places where I can say,

There's room for you here, too.

I don't think that means the inward work is finished. Unfortunately, I don't think we're ever finished.

Roots are important.
But the point is the fruit.

Fruit that sustains people.

A year ago, I took one of the biggest risks of my life.

I left everything familiar and came to a place I didn't really know because I believed God was leading me here.
I thought I knew why.
Maybe I didn’t.

But what brought me here isn’t what keeps me here.

Beauty.
Belonging.
Gratitude.

The quiet, ordinary miracle of feeling at home.
Of knowing and naming the creatures around me.
Of waving at the same geese every morning like they're neighbors.

A year ago, I needed a place where I could belong.

And God made room for me.

He gave me room to heal.
Room to grow roots.
Room to receive the manna I needed for each day.

And after a year of learning to live inside that gift...

maybe now I get to make room, too.