The apples have begun falling from the trees, as happens about the time when blackberries begin to ripen. The deer have shown up to partake in the gleanings, softly, tentatively, and I’m reminded of how even the birds of the air are provided for. I am oddly comforted by this fact when news comes through my text (“And so life goes on,” she says) followed by a photo and link to the real estate sale listing of our big house. The one we built for our grandchildren to someday visit, the one we ultimately left and downsized from ten years ago, the one PRESENT referenced and we spent many, many podcast episodes discussing. THAT house. It was the first time I had looked upon that big house since I left it almost twenty years ago (had it been so long?).
I bit. I was curious and clicked the link and everything else in my world disappated. The owners had painted the house a dove gray, and repainted everything else, but the rooms were the same: the downstairs covered by the same wide planked pine floors I had shipped from the east coast, the bedrooms upstairs with their hideaway nooks my husband had trimmed out, the black hardware and the soaking tubs and the farmhouse sink and the real iron cabinet pulls. The extra large slate gray kitchen tile and mudroom stained concrete floors that looked like leather and the lengthy pegboard we used to hang a plethora of coats and scarves and diaper bags. I remembered how I lay upon my side in the second story condo previous, very pregnant with my fourth baby, shifting around magazine pictures and samples and sketches, making the decisions that made that big house what it was, and is.
The owner certainly had good taste. After all, it was her “dream house” and, because we live in a small town, she would ask my husband questions about this or that over the years, and because he knew every nail in that house, he could answer them all. She finished off our basement to an elegant apartment anyone would be delighted to use, with beautiful French doors to a serene outdoor patio. The landscaping looks something out of a twenty dollar magazine, you know the kind I mean, with paper that feels sensuous and isn’t contaminated by perfume samples or ads for pharmaceutical drugs. To say the house was elevated would be an understatement.
And it’s for sale.
Would we go back? If we had the option? And the heftier bank loan?
We both said no, but with a crimp in our guts and a bit of sadness. The hopes we had for that house simply did not deliver for us, and in fact overwhelmed and complicated our lives in multiple ways. Should we have stayed and hoped for the best? That’s hard to say—would we be the same people now if we had? Would we be as close? Would our children have learned the same worthy and weighty life lessons? It is all an unknown, impossible and unanswerable questions, meaningless meanderings.
God was good to us in that our buyer loved that house. It made it easier to part with. And He made sure to plant us in a home and land of our own again before it went back up for sale. I suppose my curiosity is satisfied now, and I don’t have to wonder about taking a drive down that long gravel driveway just to see it again, much less attend an open house (how weird would that be?).
Of course life goes on, of course it does; the apples still grow and fall, and the world turns. But I am simultaneously here and not here. Yes, I am thankful for my place in the world, another day, my age, the experiences our family shares, even for the opportunity to watch deer gently pick up apples. But I am greatly homesick for the Kingdom and for the day when I will know that I am truly home, home at last, home to stay.
If you’re looking for a simpler, more purposeful life outside of the rule of technology, perhaps you can glean from my experimentations in seeking a more present life. Learn more about the book (and how to get it) by clicking on its image.
