Drawn to Home
Sometimes, some things happen that just stop us in our tracks. Today was one of those days.
This afternoon, I open Facebook and saw a notification:
“You have a memory with Opal Lohnes Core to look back on today.”
No big deal, right? It’s usually some cute pics or funny stories about the kids. Not today. Today, I was reminded that it’s been only FIVE YEARS that Opal posted indicating we were going to vacation here for the first time and asking for recommendations.
FIVE!! YEARS!!
Like, how is that even possible?!? Unbeknownst to us, we would spend every day hiking and chasing waterfalls in Great Smoky Mountains National Park later that summer. We’d raft the rushing rivers, tour Biltmore in Asheville, and spontaneously take the Blue Ridge Parkway back to the National Park before before crossing it to get back to our mountain cabin. And it was standing at one of the many overlooks on the Parkway looking out into the sea of blue mountain ridges here in Western North Carolina that Opal and I looked at each other and said, “We have to live here someday.”
It was the most beautiful place we had ever seen, and something inside us drew us here. Don’t get me wrong, we had visited our fair share of other beautiful places before, but there was a peace and stillness here that was different. It was unexplainable. It was as if God was calling down from the skies and calling us here. Calling us home.
I specifically remember it being so difficult to return home from that vacation. We loved it here so much, we returned six months later. Then again two more times over the next two years. It was on our last of those four trips here that I recall saying as we drove off from our Airbnb that final morning to make our 1,000-mile trek back to Texas, “I’m not upset to leave this place this time like I have each of our previous trips. Because I know with absolute certainty this is the last time we’ll ever have to leave North Carolina.”
We went home and put our house on the market within a matter of days. We put an offer and went under contract on the 1905 historic home we had spent two hours touring on our last day here. And just two-and-a-half years after Opal made this first post asking for recommendations to visit this area, we made the 1,000-mile trek back to where we’d call home.
It’s kinda funny because, chances are, the overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway where we stood and proclaimed this would be where we live someday was quite likely overlooking the valley that we now call our forever home.
It’s kinda funny how God just makes these things happen. And it’s kinda funny when you know in the deepest part of your heart what you’re being called to do.
The truth is, these miracles are within our grasp if we’re just willing to remain quiet and still enough to hear them and then become faithful enough to see them through.
