Almost ten years ago to the day, my family set out on a journey to find a new home. We had received a phone call from a friend who lived in Columbus just out side of Forest Lake, north of the Twin Cities. He was going to be looking at an estate in Ham Lake a few miles west of where he lived. The property was older but had good bones and could be remodeled into an ideal family home. Since he knew we were in the market, he thought we might like to take a look.
Ham Lake? We were planning to move that summer. Our family had outgrown the turn-of-the-century home in North St. Paul that my husband and I purchased when we were first married. Our oldest had just turned five and would be entering kindergarten in the fall. We wanted to find a new home and put down roots in a community so that the boys would be able to build friendships that would last throughout their school years. We had been considering White Bear Lake or maybe as north as Hugo, but Ham Lake, we had never even heard of the place!
And so the adventure began on sunny spring day. The drive seemed endless. When we finally turned down the dirt road that took us past one of the many sod fields that define Ham Lake, we felt like we were in another world. Beautiful tall oaks, pines and birches canopied the gravel road. Soon the trees opened to a wonderful little country home set back from the road. As we drove up the unpaved driveway, something about the home stirred long forgotten memories of children spilling out of the car after a day long drive to visit far off relatives. The peacefulness and tranquility were the embodiment of a sanctuary. We were sold.
So a few days after our first visit, my husband and I put our starter home in North St. Paul on the market. We signed the papers to have the home remodeled to fit the dream. Our home in the city sold quickly. Unfortunately, not everything went as planned. As this was a few years before I became a real estate agent, and we worked directly with the builder we were not represented in the transaction. The builder was not competent and the remodeling was done poorly. After we moved in we were finding problems and errors that were costly to fix. We weren't in the home a year before we placed the house back on the market so the nightmare would end.
Funny thing happens when you spend time in the beauty of the country; we found it hard to move back to the city. As we searched for homes in Maplewood and White Bear Lake, nothing was measuring up to our 2.5 acres a few miles further north. We were at a crossroads and finding it difficult to make a decision as to where to live.
Suddenly the answer came to us, though how is a mystery. Maybe it was the doe with her two fawns that had touch our hearts when they stood under our front window the past autumn eating the fallen crabapples from the ground. It could have been walking in the first snowfall when 
it was so intensely quiet, we were certain that there were no other people in the world. Or was it that first spring when the day lilies first burst into the beautiful, vivid orange flowers along the parameter of the property. Possibly it was that bald eagle that nested at the end of the road on the Shore of Coon Lake. I can't say for certain if it was one particular event or a culmination of all of the above.
What I do remember is the day a car full of potential buyers pulled up our driveway two weeks after we had listed. The family stepped out awestruck with the beauty of the bright spring day. The grandmother walked over to me and exclaimed, "It is so beautiful here! Why would you ever leave?" Why indeed! My answer stopped all other inquires as I said, "I don't think we can."
It was in that moment that our family embraced our home. We re-purchased our little home in the country in our minds. We cancelled our listing as despite its faults, this property had become our home. And as the cliché goes, home is where your heart is. This home had captured our hearts and we had made it our sanctuary.
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