Connected in Story: Chapter 2

In Which We Meet Anne Spelled With An E and Find a Place to Call Home

Last week, we started our story about connection with Winnie the Pooh and his jolly band of friends. I needed that reminder to move toward connection. I find it so easy to hide myself away from true community. I want to remember to be brave and vulnerable. But there is another idea I want to consider in our story of connection.

Home. It is something Anne Shirley wished for her whole life. She had places where she lived, but they were dark and full of sadness, neglect, and abuse. No one loved or wanted Anne. Until…

One day, because of a mistake in communication, she came to live on Prince Edward Island in Canada. The story was bumpy for a bit, before Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert chose to step forward into an unknown future and take a chance to give a little red haired orphan girl a home. 

Once Anne made her home at Green Gables on PEI, she began to build a life there. But I think it’s important to consider the choice involved. Anne had been hurt so many times. She knew more loneliness and pain than she did joy and belonging. It would have been easy, even natural for her to be skeptical and guard her heart. But she chose courage and connection.

Despite being love starved her whole life, Anne found love and a home in the little town of Avonlea. 

After our great loss, I moved my boys to Montgomery. Many people found this choice odd and unsettling. I had an awful lot of people ask me, “Why Montgomery, when your family is mostly in Birmingham?” Here is the truth: I made the best choice I could in the worst moments of my life. But our time in Montgomery changed me. During our 2 years living there, we learned who we were as a family of 3. We learned how to be in a church without being a clergy family. I found myself accepted - just as Renae, and not for who I was married to. I sang in the praise band, and we made friends. We also began seeing a counselor there who has walked with us in our darkest days and has helped us to process all that we have been through before and since our loss. But I think the most important lesson from that time was that I could survive and build a life on my own.

Around Thanksgiving in 2018, God began to put a longing inside me and my boys - a possibility of change. We began to envision a new home, and in May of 2019, we moved to Moody and bought a home near my parents. It is what everyone expected us to do 2 years prior, but I think I needed time to prove to myself that I could do this new thing alone. And I needed time to heal before I was ready to make a life.

Once we moved here to our new house, it took another 4 months of visiting churches to find a place that felt right. And 6 months later, Covid shut down all the things. 

Just as we were beginning to find our place, quarantine happened. We knew how to confine ourselves to our house; what we didn’t know was how to build community while we were huddled inside. 

It has taken a lot of time for me to find a true home. Really it has taken me a long time to even understand what home is for us in this new season. It was more than learning I could do this alone. It was more than buying a house close to family. It was even more than the nesting necessary to make this home feel like ours. Home is about all of those things. But it is also much more. 

Anne made a home at Green Gables with Matthew and Marilla. She made the east gable room her own with flowers and girlish touches. But home is about more than just the place you live and the cozy spaces you create within. I think Anne knew this. She embraced life in all its beauty and sorrow. She experienced everything with open arms - from the mountaintops to the “depths of despair.” She was loved deeply by Matthew and Marilla. She found a kindred spirit in Diana - her “lifelong bosom friend.” She made a difference in those around her. Anne deeply affected the people in that quiet, green-gabled house, as well as those in that sleepy little town.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about what home is for me during this last year.

I needed a home that was mine - one that we could really settle in. I needed to be closer to my family and reconnect to the people who stood by me when my life fell apart. I needed a friend to do life with, and I have gratefully and gloriously made a friend who loves me deeply and challenges me to be my best self. And I get to do the same for her! I am so grateful to have all these things come together. They have been absolutely life changing over the past year.

What was startling about Anne was her ability to create community around her with an open heart.  And I think that is what I have been looking for too. I need my family and my friends to do life with. I need a tribe. I need to feel ownership in my community. I need to have purposeful work to contribute. I need to see beauty around me. I need to love where I live.

But I also need to love myself and know who I am. (This is definitely something I am still working on - and it is hard.) It is something Anne understood - she knew who she was way down deep. I want to know myself that way too. I want to be at home in my own soul and body. Brene Brown is my favorite author, and I absolutely love this quote from Braving the Wilderness

True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.

 We all need a place and people to belong to- a place that feels like home. We all need to belong to ourselves too. I hope you have experienced this for yourself. I will leave you with a question, and I’d love for you to share with me here in the comments: What is it that creates home for you?

And yes, this is me. I once played Marilla in community theater. 🙂

“Dear old world,’ (Anne) murmured, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”