The Light At The End of The Tunnel

I have been living with my in-laws for five years.

Yes, this is where your eyes pop out of your head and you feel really bad for me, and preferably send me gifts to show your immense sympathy.

Three years ago this month, we bought a very old house that needed a LOT of work. Little did we know it would need about 347 times the amount of work that we thought it did, and that we would STILL be working on it three years later. Little did we also know that living in a tiny basement apartment with no windows while working from home with two children is likely to drive a mom completely and utterly insane. Sometimes I wonder if we would still have done it if we had known.

But we will never know that, and now we are in the final stages in completely rebuilding our home for us to finally move in. And although my nerves are shot and I am about one step away from rocking back and forth in the fetal position morning to night, we are almost there. We are mere months from being able to move all our possessions into our very own home, with windows and everything.

And I will finally be able to have friends over for play dates. I will be able to do laundry whenever I want to and my husband and I will be able to have sex as loud as we want to, in every room of the house, if we wish. My daughter will have a beautiful, pink princess room of her own instead of being shoved into a spare room full of old books and 30 years of unused Christmas gifts, and we will have closets of our very own--in every room. And all those fabulous gifts we got for our wedding five years ago will be brought out of storage and we will finally be able to enjoy them. To be honest, I don't even remember what half of them were. It will be like my wedding day all over again.

So, as difficult and emotionally tumultuous the past five years have been, and as back breaking and expensive as it has been to turn this 1850's structure into a habitable home, I don't regret it. Because in mere months, I will get to enjoy the freedom and space that I have been without for five years. My husband and I will get to re-acquaint ourselves with living together in our own home, and we will have a kitchen table at which we will sit around and have family dinners with our children. Things that we took for granted before will feel like the greatest gifts, and I will feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

I see the light at the end of the tunnel. And once we step into that light, we will never be in the dark again, because we will always know how lucky we truly are. Is there anything better than that?

I don't think so.