Today marks six months in Texas.

I made promises before I left New York. I said I didn't know what the plan would be but that within six months I'd have a plan. I thought that my plan might mean six months here and then a few months in Tennessee or Virginia; North Carolina or Pennsylvania were also possibilities. I thought that after six months in the metroplex I would be peopled out, flatlanded out, suburbed out, and ready for the east coast again or at least the mountainous south.

(You can take the girl away from the mountains, but you can't take the mountains away from the girl. Or some cliche like that.)

All I mean is I really thought that this place wouldn't be home.

But this week, as my dear friend packed up and head back to our mountains, as I have a coffeeshop conversation with a fellow northerner, as I book a ticket to spend a week up north, I find that this really is home to me right now.

The other night I stood in the doorway to our living room, where we live and breathe and eat and laugh. The lights were low, just a lamp and some music in the background. And I sighed deeply.

Not because I felt at home, though I did. Not because I love our home, though I do. Not because I'm grateful to be here, though I am.

I sighed because I am so aware of God's ability to surprise us and how He is in the small details. The ones that led me to a sermon last winter, to reconnect with an old friend, to impulsively buy a ticket to Fort Worth a year ago, to sell tables and books and things once held dear.

He was in the details of time and circumstance and moments and pleasure and soul sickness and my hardened heart in a friend's green carpeted living room. He was in the car with another friend when I exclaimed "He is not good!" He was in one pastor's warning to not do things out of order and in the encouragement of a teary eyed friend to dig deeply for my heart's desires.

He heard all of those times, those weeping moments, those frustrated cries, those angst-filled questions and deep, deep doubts. He was there orchestrating the recipe for His ultimate glory and my joy.

He was in the packing up and setting out, with no job, no plan, no home, only a small glimmer of the hope that His goodness might be found when all else has been cast aside.

And I know that it might be hard for some people that I am here and not there, in the north, with the mountains and spring bursting out, the kids that I love so much and their parents I am blessed to know. I know it might be hard that I have found a surprising home here and not there.

But here I have found God. I have finally turned around and seen how His goodness has pursued me relentlessly in every one of those hard moments.

He is here and here I have found my home.