A new year, a new look at 'home'

It's 2011. A new year. A time for counting blessings and resolving issues, for turning over a new leaf.

My husband and I have many blessings to count. The Midwest has been very good to us. Despite the downturn our economy has taken, we both have decent jobs, a nice house and enough income that we can maintain a fairly comfortable standard of living. Beyond that, we have a beautiful and healthy son, a loyal and trustworthy dog (yes, she's our other child), loving families and each other. What more could we want?

But oh, what a trip it's been to get here. Talk about resolving issues.

Moving to Missouri from our native Pennsylvania mountains was not easy for us. Not only was it a bit of a culture shock for us, but the landscape itself was so different that we truly felt like strangers in a strange land. We didn't know anybody. All of our friends and family, whom we'd been so close to, were hundreds of miles away. For a while, all we could do was long for "home," for familiarity, and for the comfort that comes with it.

I'll be the first to admit that we had our rough patches. When you're suddenly spending all of your spare time either alone or with each other, things come up. Annoyances. Perceived grievances. Frustrations. They all come bubbling to the surface. Fights happen. Somehow, you manage to get through it and work things out, and if you're lucky, you become stronger people from it. We were lucky.

I think the move was harder on my husband than it was on me. Whole generations of his family were born, lived and died in the same small-town region. He has had the same best friend since the first grade, and many of his "friends" are actually cousins or siblings. He had deep roots there. Me? Not so much.

But granted, I felt the strain, too. I had never lived outside of Pennsylvania, and I missed my family and friends very much. There were times when I felt utterly, hopelessly alone. I was just glad to have Sam at my side. I know he felt the same way.

Ironically, I feel like the same people we missed so much made moving harder for us. I know they didn't mean to. But it didn't help when they were constantly telling us how much they missed us, or wondering when we were coming "home," or if we would ever move back "home." I know they meant well, but talk about tugging on our heartstrings, and making a bad situation (feeling alone) even worse (having the urge to give up what we have and run back to our "comfort zone").

We both struggled with what to do. Do we go back? Do we stay here? Do we move someplace completely different? Another issue bubbled to the surface. Another bout of arguments. More rounds of holding each other's hands and saying, "We'll get through this." In the end, we simply asked, "Why does this matter?"

Really, where is home? Is it where you live? Is it where you're from? Is it with your family? Or to cite the old phrase, is it where your heart is? Perhaps home is all of these things, or perhaps it merely depends on who you ask. All I can say is, after 3-1/2 years of longing for what it was, I think my husband and I have finally worked out our answer for what our home actually is: Our family, our life, the one he and I have worked so hard to build together. It doesn't matter where we live, as long as we have that.

And that's an answer I can live with.