I don’t talk about it enough, but I am a member of the best writers’ guild ever (and I do mean ever), the Redbud Writers Guild. We had a retreat two weeks ago and an editor for a publishing company was there with us. She said she was skeptical that a group of female writers could support one another well – and I could read what she meant. How could a group of women work together without cattiness and jealousy and the like?

But we really are for one another. And it has been the most encouraging group for me to be part of.

I’m excited to be writing today for one amazing Redbud writer, Jen Pollock Michel. Her book Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition, and the Life of Faith won Christianity Today’s Book of the Year in 2015 and she has a new book coming out this spring called Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home. (available for pre-order now!)

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I think I should have called this piece “Searching for Home,” but details details… here it is!

140 S Morgan St
Denver, CO

“What’s wrong with it?” My husband and I look around the sunlit living room and at one another incredulous.

I can’t help question whether this house is listed at the right price. 8 weeks pregnant and perpetually nauseous, I had spent hours in the cab of our realtor’s truck visiting foreclosed and short-sale homes. We visited house after house, looking, we soon realized, not for the home of our dreams, but for one we could merely afford. Afford and not have to renovate beyond our budget.

There was the house that smelled like wet dog, urine, and mildew.

The house with the convex living room floor.

The long skinny house with no hallways, but one room leading to another to another to another. Bedroom, dining room, kitchen, living room, bedroom.

The house we backed out of, because the hole in the basement floor was the smallest problem as the foundation surrounding it cracked and crumbled.

With each house we visited, I became more discouraged. The truth was, I didn’t want to live in Denver anymore. I felt that God had called me to serve Him there and I willingly said, yes. But I couldn’t help feeling that He had sent me far from my Minnesota home and forgotten about me.

read the rest here…