Moving

“Wait. When do you have to be out?”

My friend and I were sitting in my living room, and as she looked around, she was thinking she must have misheard me. My family had been living in our rental home for two years, and it was time to move on. We were scheduled to turn in the keys in just four days.

Not one thing had been packed. Not a book. Not a photo album. Not a single fork.

“You have help coming, right?”

I mumbled something about it all being fine and that we’d figure it out. We were moving just twenty minutes down the road and everything would be okay. I basically said everything but the one word I knew I needed to say—help.

Because we’ve been friends for almost twenty years, she knows me well. My protest went in one ear and out the other. Within the hour, she had lined up her husband and set aside Saturday to help us.

My friend spent countless hours over the next several days cleaning out bathroom drawers, pulling long-forgotten items from under beds, and battling giant dust bunnies behind the dryer…

Please click through to The Glorious Tableto continue reading about how accepting help with a move brought up all kinds of emotions but, most of all, pointed us back to Jesus.

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It’s not much to look at from the outside. The paint is faded, the driveway is cracked, and the garden is dead (again). But if you come inside with me, I think you’ll see much more than a tired little house.

Watch your step as you come in. My husband carried me through this doorway when we bought this place ten years ago. We were still newlyweds, fresh-faced with bright eyes, and we were ready to conquer the world.

If you walk down the hall and peek into the first room on the left, you’ll see the walls we spent hours preparing for our first baby. I must have sampled eight different shades of sky blue to find just the right one. The shade tree and flower garden murals are the products of aching arms and full hearts as we dreamed of a sweet new life.

Throw open the window there, and you’ll see the hydrangeas lining the fence. I can’t believe how big they’ve grown. Every year, I look forward to their cheerful blue and purple blossoms. We fill our house with summer when we bring them in, as many as we can carry. Every household object becomes a potential vase.

Across the hall are the shower tiles that held me up one cold Sunday morning when my beautiful, feisty Mamaw went home to glory. She fought an all-out street brawl against cancer, and did so with classy southern grace. My heart has never known such a deep ache as when I had to wake up in a world without her in it.

In the backyard is the playground we inherited when another family’s kids left childhood behind. With tears in their eyes, they set it up for our toddler son and told us to cherish the memories we were sure to make. We made our first memory there when we plopped Caleb on the swing and told him he was going to be a big brother…

To read more about what I learned from saying goodbye to our first home where so much life happened, click through to The Glorious Table.

http://theglorioustable.com/2016/01/you-dont-need-a-perfect-house-to-make-a-perfect-home/

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