Saying Goodbye: Our 10th House-iversary
This past October, as is our autumnal custom, our eight-year-old son Noah and I knelt in the dirt in our front yard planting bulbs in the final days before the first freeze was forecasted to arrive. Tulips, daffodils, allium, hyacinths in every color—we dreamed out loud of the beauty that would come when Spring arrived.
“Are we going to be here to see the flowers when they bloom,” Noah asked as he scooped up another handful of dirt and gently placed it around the bulbs, careful not to tip them over.
I sighed wearily. “I don’t know, sweetie.” I sat back on my heels and looked around the garden we have labored so hard over, at our beloved house that has been the background of a thousand family memories and my children’s only home. I reached for his little-boy hand and gave it a squeeze.
“If we are still in our house, then we will enjoy these flowers. If we aren’t, then it will be the kindest surprise for whoever gets to live here next. We will watch and see what God will do.”
“I will miss all the things we planted,” he said in a shaky voice, eyes focused downward on the task at hand.
I watched the sun dip behind our gabled roof. “Me too, bud. Me too.”
We are moving in three days.
I can hardly believe it’s true. Ten and a half years ago, when we first set foot in our quirky old Victorian on the best block of all of W. Cucharras St., we just knew this house was ours to love. And, oh, have we loved it. We thought it was a mansion when we first moved in from our two-bedroom walk-up apartment. Our genuine hope was to live in this storied house for the rest of our lives, raising our family here, watching the neighborhood change, sowing and sowing and sowing seeds of the love of Christ on our block and in our neighborhood, and maybe even getting a peek at the good fruit that God would bring as we joined him in the work he was doing to draw our neighbors to himself.
This house has been and is our dream house. The slow realization that both our family and the new dreams God is giving us for this next season of life, hospitality, and ministry have outgrown the capacity of this house has felt like the death of a dream. On our actual tenth house-iversary in September, I could not write a single word of my usual reflection on another year of life in our house. I was overwhelmed by grief in anticipation of saying goodbye to all the goodness and grace that God has given us in this place.
And yet, in these intervening months as we have waited for God to provide a buyer for our house and guide us toward our new home, the pedal tone of grief—which is still present and pricks my heart with every “last” we have experienced this week—has given way to a melody of genuine joy and excitement and expectant hope for life in this new home.
We will miss so many things about this house.
Our neighbors—the impromptu dinners, chats over the fence, glasses of wine on the porch, caring for each other in the midst of our differences, the genuine friendship
The warmth of the light in our south-facing kitchen
The creak of our stairs
The century-old doorknobs
The walk to our coffee shop and the farmers market
The flowers we have planted over the course of 10 years
Greeting people as they walk by our house
The neighborhood park
The lead glass window on the landing
The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that we dreamed up and saved for
Crowding in shoulder-to-shoulder to feast with friends around folding tables running the length of our house
Summer afternoons on the front porch
Our sliver of a Pikes Peak view out our bathroom skylight
The cheery gingerbread trim on the front of our house
The gentle warp of the glass in our big, original-to-the-house front window
My little sitting area in our room where I have rocked all my babies
Somehow all these small things and a million more have added up to one of the dearest, clearest, most tangible embodiments of God’s goodness. In and through this house, the Spirit has mysteriously, imperceptibly shaped us more fully into the image of Christ over the course of a decade learning to be watchful for his presence with us right here in our home, right here on this street.
I know the contours of God’s kindness in this home, in the same way that I can walk in the dark through our familiar rooms, reach out for the lamp I know is there though I can’t see it, my fingertips meeting the switch at the exact moment I knew it would. As I pack up all our worldly goods, I wonder: What will God’s kindness look like in a new place with the light slanting differently through unfamiliar windows? But the same God who revealed himself to us in and through our beloved home these past ten years, who heard our prayers asking him to make it a place where anyone who walks through our door could experience his welcome and love, has gone before us to our new home. What gifts has he hidden for us in our life there that we might know his love and goodness more fully? Where is his Kingdom waiting to be revealed in these unfamiliar rooms and on our new street? I don’t know, but I am watching for what he will do, for the glimmers of his Kingdom coming in our midst.
And in the meantime, we’ve had lots of time for dreaming and hoping as we have waited for over four months to call this home ours since we first set foot in it.
We hope God will give us even more people gather around an even longer table.
We hope to read many good stories together in front of our cozy fireplace.
We hope our kids’ friends will know our door is always open to them—however many of them want to come at the same time.
We hope to create something beautiful with the good bones of our otherwise-in-need-of-TLC backyard.
We hope to design a hard-working kitchen that will keep up with the appetites of four growing kids and ensure there’s always more than enough for an unexpected guest or five.
We hope to create comfortable spaces for friends to stay for a trip to the mountains, or to be a haven for those who need to rest or write or grieve for a while.
We hope to hear kids running rowdy as kids should and just smile and keep reading in peace because they and their volume are in the basement, and we are not. ;)
We hope to enjoy morning coffee and write more books in the sunshine on our back patio.
We hope to spend time on the trail behind our house every single day.
We hope the kids become so confident on that trail that they can take it all the way to school together on their bikes.
We hope that anyone who walks through our door will experience God’s welcome and rest.
We hope to sow and sow and sow seeds of the love of Christ on our street and in our neighborhood, knowing that before we ever arrived and long after we are gone, God will be drawing our neighbors to his heart.
When we moved into our house 10 years ago, the person who lived here before us left two things behind: an unusable fire pit with a wobbly leg and rusted base, and a simple beaded crucifix nailed above the kitchen doorway. We hauled away the fire pit, but the Cross still graces our kitchen, ten years later.
Still sustains us ten years later.
Still shapes us ten years later.
Still redeems us ten years later.
Still anchors us ten years later.
Still opens the door to Home, our “Dwelling Place in all generations” (Ps. 90:1), the heart of God.
And if the Cross goes before us into this new season in a new home—and I know in my bones that it does—then we have nothing to fear. He is with us.
If you have ever spent time in our home in the past 10 years, I would love to hear your memories of your time with us here.
Also, will you please pray for us as we close on our home(s) this Friday, and move in on Saturday. You would not *believe* the stories of how God has continued to make a way in this seven-month process when it seemed we were at yet another dead end. But then again, if you know him, then maybe you would believe the stories. :)