One of the most incredible semesters of college happened just before I met Martin. I was really in tune with my hopes, my ideas of faith, and where I wanted to go in life. Once a week, I got up at 6:00 to meet with a small group of girls. At our very last meetup, we each told everyone a powerful goal we carried in our hearts. Here’s the goal I whispered:
I want to write a book that helps people.
Story has been on my mind a lot these days.
Our lives are these big collections of moments and memories; it’s really wonderful to think about. In fact, it’s empowering. Where would you or I be without the stories and experiences? Where would we even be without the stories of our parents? Or grandparents? Even the bad experiences shape us.
Some of our stories are things we share with others. Some of them are just for us, deep in our hearts. What if we could take those stories and fill pages and pages of books, then wrap them up in a big bow? It could be a gift for tomorrow. It could be a gift for ourselves.
So many changes happen at the hangar remodel these days.
It seems almost impossible to Martin and me that this space looked like this six months ago:
Can you just not believe it, too?
I feel our home slowly coming together, and I’m so excited. All the adventures (like learning to fly airplanes) and experiences (like living overseas) have wrapped themselves into my heart, and I see the influences slowly come alive as Martin and I plan how we want our home to look and function.
As I sit with you right now, we have a pound cake in the oven. There are 30 She personal journals on my desk. The prompts about stretching your wings are smiling at me right now, I think. Then I tell myself, “That’s silly, Katie.”
There is a burst of energy that hits us every day that quite honestly, we don’t know what to think of. All we know to do is trip over ourselves on our way out the door of the tire house as we get back to work on building our home in the airplane hangar.
Sometimes I park my home construction cart right smack in front of my horse. It started about 20 years ago. My brother and I decided that we needed a treehouse. Our dad was at work, and it would be another million hours before he’d be home to help us. That is, of course, our assumption that after a long, hard day at the office, all our dad would want to do is take off his tie and climb into a pine tree to help us build our fort, which we figured he could wrap up by nightfall.
I was thinking about what I want 2012 to look like. My immediate thought was, “Oh! I should keep focusing on becoming.” (My word for 2011.) The idea was fleeting.
A year of becoming was truly awesome. But it doesn’t feel right for 2012. It feels so Katie-focused and selfish. I was about to head to the kitchen to start making dinner for Martin and me, and that’s when I knew.
I’m an American splitting life between a 480 square foot apartment in Berlin, Germany and – get this – a house made of old tires in the Rocky Mtns.
This blog chronicles the journey of Making This Home.Meet Katie.
