I thought I would be more excited. They are finally building our house. After five years of talking about this, planning for it, waiting, changing plans, waiting some more, dealing with financing and permits and all the other things that had to happen to get us here, there is finally equipment sitting outside. The builders have staked out the house. They are clearing the ground. The permit is approved. It is actually happening. Everybody is excited… except I’m not.

This journey started five years ago, in August 2021, when our son put his house up for sale and moved back home. We had this idea that we would find enough land where we could all build and live near each other. In January 2022, we found the property. We bought it on February 22, 2022. My husband and our son actually signed the closing papers at 2:22 p.m. on 2/22/22. It was one of those funny little details that made the whole thing feel even more special. At that point, I thought I knew what we were building.

I didn’t know anything about my husband’s addiction or the betrayal in our marriage. I wouldn’t begin to learn about any of that until September 8, 2023. When we bought this property, I was planning a future based on the marriage I believed I had. I had no idea how much my understanding of my marriage, my husband, myself, and our future was going to change. But the plan for the property kept moving forward.

Our son and daughter-in-law finally moved into their house in July 2025. We put our house up for sale and moved in with them that October so we could move forward with building ours. Even that move happened during a very uncertain time in our marriage. I originally moved into a separate bedroom. I said I was going to stay there for 30 days because I needed the space. I made it two weeks before I moved back into the bedroom with him.

I think about that differently now. I knew I needed space, but I didn’t trust myself enough to keep taking the space I needed. I wanted things to be better. I wanted to move forward. I wanted our marriage to heal. And I think sometimes wanting those things so badly has made me move forward before I was actually ready. Now, almost a year later, I am asking for space again. This time I am trying to trust myself enough not to rush out of it just because my husband wants to move forward or because I wish I was ready. I am learning that wanting something to be better doesn’t mean it is better. Wanting to be ready doesn’t mean I am ready. And wanting there to be fruit doesn’t make the fruit appear.

And right in the middle of all of that, after this really long wait, they are finally building our house. I have waited five years for this. I have spent countless hours thinking about this house, drawing plans, changing plans, making decisions, figuring out how we were going to pay for it, selling our old house, moving in with our kids, dealing with permits and contractors and all the little things that had to happen before somebody could finally put a piece of equipment in the dirt and start building. Now they are doing it, and I look outside and don’t feel excited.

I’m glad they’re building it. I want the house. I’m thankful that we finally got the permit and that things are moving forward. But there is this huge question mark hanging over all of it. What is my life going to look like in that house? Am I even going to live there? Is it ever really going to be my home? Those are horrible questions to have running through my head while everyone else is celebrating breaking ground, but they are honest questions because I don’t know what is going to happen with my marriage.

I want this new house to represent something new for us. I want it to be a place where we start a different chapter of our marriage. I want the relationship we have inside those walls to be different from the relationship we had before. But a new house can’t create a new marriage. New walls don’t create safety. A new bedroom doesn’t create intimacy. A new kitchen doesn’t create connection. A new address doesn’t change old patterns. There has to actually be something new.

And right now, that is where I am struggling. I don’t expect perfection, but I do expect learning. I expect repentance to eventually produce fruit. Matthew 3:8 says, “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” I can’t make that fruit appear just because the house is being built. I can’t convince myself that everything is going to be okay because I desperately want it to be okay. And I can’t build the kind of marriage I want by myself.

The builders can build the house. They have blueprints. They have measurements. They know where the walls go and where the doors and windows belong. They can look at the plans and know what they are building toward. I wish I had a blueprint like that for the rest of my life. I wish somebody could show me what happens next. I wish I knew whether RD is going to do the work necessary to build something different with me. I wish I knew whether the changes will last. I wish I knew whether we will eventually move into that house together and whether it will feel safe and peaceful and really become our home.

I don’t know. Maybe that is why I can’t feel the excitement everyone expects me to feel. For five years, the question was whether we would ever get this house built. Now that the house is finally being built, the question has become whether the life I imagined living there is going to exist. I thought breaking ground would feel like arriving somewhere. Instead, I still feel like I am standing in the unknown.

But maybe I don’t have to know yet. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells me to trust in the Lord with all my heart and not lean on my own understanding. I have gone back to those words many times in my life when I couldn’t see what God was doing. Trusting God has never meant that I suddenly understood everything or that I liked what was happening. Sometimes it has simply meant admitting that I don’t know what happens next and trusting that He does.

So I’ll watch the builders build the house based on the blueprints I made and trust God with the parts of my life for which I don’t have a blueprint. I don’t know whether this marriage will become what I hope it can become. I don’t know what my life will look like when those walls are finished. I don’t even know whether that house will become the home I imagined when we bought this land on February 22, 2022.

I wish I knew. I wish I could look at all that equipment outside and just be excited that after five years, this is finally happening. Maybe someday I will find that excitement, but for today, I am giving myself permission to just be still.

-Aimee
August 29, 2026