Well, we didn’t get the house. We had the house…sort of; it was under a contingent contract for a couple of months. That contingency was the sale of our current home.

Last Saturday, the call came that another offer meant to sweep our offer on the house away was on the table and we had 24 hours to structure the financing of the house. Or win the lottery.

We calmly backed away and let go. And we let go of more than just that house; we let go of our entire plan to move. We are staying right where we are.

I’m still in that place between relief and disappointment. I went out of town to Chicago the day our plans fell apart and had a great weekend playing, learning and discovering in a big city. Now that I’ve been home for a few days, I’m getting my bearings around what is and will continue to unfold as far as home goes.

I’ll walk through my disorientation and malaise and finally get my suitcase unpacked in the next day or so. And unpacking that suitcase is really a metaphor for…unpacking my suitcase. I am staying where I am. I don’t have to search any longer. And I know that soon enough, I’ll really be able to embrace that.

Something happened this weekend that helped me open the door to knowing this. It was like the Universe saying, “We know you don’t feel this or believe it yet, but it’s all right here in front of you. Just stay put.”

This weekend, I had the luxury of a staying in large, quiet hotel room — pajamas and wifi on my last night in town. After being in classes during the day, I went back to my room that night and decided to watch a movie on Netflix — one of my favorites: Under the Tuscan Sun. It’s the story of a newly divorced woman who buys and restores an Italian villa on a whim while on a vacation. She rebuilds the villa, but she also reinvents herself and grows into new relationships.

I sat in my bed watching a scene where the main character, Frances, is telling her wise and eccentric girlfriend, Catherine, about her loneliness and other life woes. Catherine essentially tells her to snap out of it.

She goes on to tell the story of being a young girl and running through the yard of her childhood home, searching for ladybugs. She looked and looked to no avail — she just couldn’t find them. Frustrated and tired, Catherine said she took to lying in the grass and falling asleep. Upon waking? “There were ladybugs crawling all over me.”

And y’all know I don’t have to spoon feed you the lesson in that little tale. Patience. Slowing down. Stop searching and see what appears. Sometimes you don’t have to find it; it’s already there. Allll of that good life-coachy jazz. It’s a great little scene and it might not have meant so much to me if I wasn’t walking through the house drama that weekend.

The best part, though? The part that made me cry and smile at the same time? I’d been seeing something flying around the room that night and assumed it was a fly that got in when I’d opened the door earlier, but I could hear continuous little “flick” sounds on the blinds or the lampshade when it would land.

Drove me crazy.

Then I heard and saw another one. And then another. I got up to take a look, and there they were.

Ladybugs. Crawling all over me.