So Much More
Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Psalm 90:1-2 NIV
It is a spring morning. The earth has washed itself clean after two days of steady rain. The grass is greener. The limbs of the white oaks stretch overhead black against the mist of the morning heavens. A dog beside me on the window seat grows impatient for me to fix her breakfast, but my coffee is hot, and I want to enjoy the quiet entrance of the day just a little bit longer.
These days are numbered. The house that has always been home for me will soon have a sign in the front yard. Papers from our meeting with the realtor are still spread across the table, waiting to be read closely and signed. My to-do list this week includes ‘call the lawyer’ along with ‘finish painting the baseboards’ and ‘clear out the garage’. This is a season of change. A season that started almost a year ago and is accelerating.
We have been too busy to think about it too much. I put a deadline down in my calendar many, many months ago and we have only needed to shift it by a week. Pretty amazing. The pool has needed a new pump and the rain pushed the yard work back and the realtor gave us a few new items for our punch list – so there you go.
I told Nancy that at some time I will lay down on the wooden floors and cry like my friend Cindy did when they sold her childhood home… but not yet. I will need to work it into the schedule.
We are at the end of the third trimester. I started equating this letting go to that familiar process of birthing a baby. For those of us who were fearful of the pain of childbirth, God allows the baby inside you to become so heavy that you finally are ready, ready, ready for the contractions to begin. I feel like soon my water will break and those first sharp pains will begin.
Every morning I lay in bed and say thank you to God. There is so very much to be thankful for. This house is a reminder to me of the goodness of God. Provision that I did not deserve, did not earn. My grandfather, Pinkney Dorroh – what a wonderful name – loved his wife and children, seemed to love his God, and loved buying land. It was his generous spirit that provided acres of land for each of his children. The deed I hold in my hand has his signature on it, as well as that of his father. It is a wonder to look at those cursive signatures and try to imagine this man who gave me so much so many years ago. His fifth child, his first daughter, my mother was born across what once was a field in what once was a white farmhouse on their dairy farm, where the sanctuary of Mitchell Road Presbyterian church now sits. It is kind of fitting that place is holy ground!
My mother grew up in a home where she was greatly cherished. There seemed to be much laughter there to soften the hard work of a farming family. The boys, up at 4 milking the cows and delivering the milk, my grandmother, killing the chicken and baking the biscuits to be ready for breakfast when the men returned. It was the last story my mother told me.
Pauline was beautiful, but she was also strong-willed and capable, and determined to get off the farm. The only one in her family of eight children to be educated beyond high school, she trained as a nurse and enlisted in WW2. She married an air force officer, birthed two children, and became a widow before she turned 30. Her husband's life insurance provided the money to build her and her daughters a house of gray brick surrounded by the oaks on the land her daddy gave her. I never forget the sacrifice of her first husband Joe for his country and unknowingly for me.
She married her second Joe here in the living room in front of the pale brick fireplace. The women in hats and gloves drank punch from cut glass cups. The wedding cake on the blond Haywood Wakefield table. There are home movies somewhere of everyone throwing rice as the new bride and groom ran out the front door and down the steps, off to their honeymoon in Florida.
I was born a year later and then Nancy three years after that as Mama woke Ann and Kathy to sing as she played “Hail, Hail, the Gangs All Here” on the piano. And we were.
This house is more than just a house, as my cousin Lynn said when a much younger cousin dismissed it as “just a 3/2”. “Oh, it is much more than that,” she countered knowingly. “It is much more.”
This house is more than a house, even more than a home. It became family. Somehow it became part of us; living, breathing, growing, changing, and adapting as each new person came through its doors. Over the years there were renovations and additions and a pool was built which became the center of the neighborhood. The pool was filled with inner tube races in the summer and the yard was filled with sleds when it snowed in the winter. Bikes and wagons raced down the driveway. Hawks built their nests in the crook where the three limbs met in the oak tree and red cardinals fed their mates from the feeder in the front yard. Extra tables were set up for dinner during the holidays, the kitchen was open for anyone who wanted to cook, and the children set up colorful tents in the living room for sleeping. It was a house full and happy.
But now, the folding metal table we used to set up just to hold the food at our family picnics has rusted and the 1950s-era highchair has fallen apart. Pictures have been pulled out of photo albums and distributed. And the last child has learned to swim in the pool – at least for this dear family.
This is my prayer; this is my hope. That another family finds their way up this driveway and into these doors. I don't want to hear that you are envisioning dollar signs and how many houses this lot will hold. I am praying for a family.
A family that wants to sit outside on hot summer nights and watch the moon rise. A family that lingers for hours at the dinner table, telling stories. A family that tucks their little ones into bed at night after reading bedtime stories and saying a prayer thanking God for His goodness.
If that is who you are and what you want, then come on in. Our door is open.
I'm home
With You, I'm home
I don't know who I'd be if I didn't know You
I'd probably fall off the edge
I don't know where I'd go if You ever let go
So keep me held in Your hands
Thank God I Do lyrics © Capitol Christian Music Group, Essential Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc