Whenever it occurs to me that I’m actually living in the Black Hills, my heart skips a beat. I think of where I was 3 years ago and where I am now, and there is something delightfully surreal about it. When I drive to work in Rapid City and drive through Keystone, or over the mountains to Custer, passing beneath the granite spires and over bits of road precariously perched on a cliffside, I just smile. This is home.

Because three years ago, March 1, 2015, my family arrived (finally) in our new home. So March is a special month.

How quickly the last three years have gone, in some regards. Yet there has been a delightful slowness about the passage of time as well. I love to feel that I’m actually tasting the time, savoring it, and can remember it. The memories are good. Even the sad or difficult memories are good. Because God is good, and He is the author of this story, and the giver of good gifts. And this gift of moving to the Hills shook up my life, shook up my soul.

I can’t imagine where I’d be if we hadn’t moved here. I know if God hadn’t had it in His plan for us to move here, He would be fulfilling His plan for me in some equally good way. But I am so thankful that His plan involved the Black Hills. I’m thankful for my church, for the work opportunities I’ve had, for God’s glorious creation that I am drawn into more and more, for the ways God has brought me places that had never even occurred to me, for the adventures, for the normalness, for the joys and sorrows, for the beauty and the struggles and the sweet moments.
And so I smile, and I thank the LORD. This is home. This is home.