Thoughts from the In-Between

t’s a strange thing to feel both deeply planted and quietly pulled.

When we moved to Georgia four years ago, I had no idea how much of myself I’d find here. Or how much I’d lose, and then find again in new ways. This place has been a classroom, a chapel, and a healing ground. It’s where my marriage grew deeper. It’s where I stopped performing and started becoming.

We’ve made a life here—a good one.

Our youngest only knows Georgia. Our sixteen-year-old has begun carving out a rhythm of his own—finding his voice, his people, his place.

And our oldest? He stepped into adulthood here. He learned what it means to fall and get back up again. To carry hard things with perseverance. To make decisions, to stand on his own, to become a man in real time. I’ve watched him become more of himself here, and that alone feels sacred.

And yet… something in me feels the whisper of elsewhere.

It’s not discontent. It’s not a rejection of what is. It’s a soft restlessness, like something is being stirred. A quiet ache for the familiar, for roots that once held us in another season—maybe not to go back, but to revisit what still calls us there. The streets that built us. The people who knew us before the unraveling. The version of home that’s never quite stopped tugging on our hearts.

And at the same time, I know what even the idea of that shift might mean for our son still in the middle of it all. How deeply he’s woven into the rhythm of life here. The thought of disrupting that feels heavy—like messing with a thread that’s finally beginning to strengthen.

So we sit in the middle. Between knowing and not-knowing. Between what’s good now and what might be good next. Between Georgia’s grace and Chicago’s memory.

There’s no big decision today. No grand announcement. Just a mother sitting in the space between two places, trying to hold it all gently: the gratitude, the grief, the longing, the love.

If you’ve ever felt torn between staying and going, between what is and what could be, then you know this ache. It’s not always something to fix. Sometimes, it’s just something to carry—with open hands and open eyes and enough trust to let the next step unfold, one heartbeat at a time.

And maybe that’s what grace is too—what we do with the tension we can’t yet resolve.

With Love from The In-Between,

-J

P.S.

Where are you feeling the tug of home—in the past, the present, or the not-yet?

What would it look like to hold that feeling without rushing to fix it?