Our Old House

I'm feeling melancholy today. This week our renters moved out of our city home. Our cute, gingerbread home where we welcomed a baby girl into our family. Where we made memories. Where we ate and slept and played and prayed and laughed and cried and grew. Grew right out of this house, even though I still say I could have lived there forever. But God had other plans for us. If I could have written our story, I would have had the place sold as soon as we left it. It would have been easier in so many ways. But God's plans are not always our plans.

There are parts of His story I like a lot better. Like I love having a big backyard for my children to play in now. I love the church He has led us to. And I love living in a home with more bathrooms, more closets. But I don't like the part of the story where, because of the slow economy, we are now living in an empty neighborhood and renting this sweet home to strangers. Strangers who are now sleeping in the room where my babies slept. Sitting on my front steps. Cooking in my 'lil lime green kitchen and enjoying the view from our living room's stained glass windows.

So this week as we are preparing it for new renters, I'm taking a walk down memory lane. And trying to remember that while His ways are not my ways, that He has a time and season for everything, and His story is ultimately better than mine. I'm praying for the next someone who will be blessed by this little shelter. I'm praying that they will take care of it, and that God will take care of me and my family, too. And I'm singing Sara Groves', "This House", and remembering my childhood home, and hoping my children will remember this childhood home of theirs with as much fondness as I do.

This House by Sara Groves

it took me by surprise
this old house and these old feelings
walked round and looked inside
familiar walls and halls and ceilings

where I'd dream and plan
every moment of sunshine
this was my whole world
it was all I knew
like the hull of a seed
this old house cracked wide open
as I grew

hadn't given it much thought
hadn't been back here for a while
everything looks so small
seen through the memories of a child

who would dream and stare
from that second story window
that was my whole world
it was all I knew
like the hull the of a seed
this old house cracked wide open
and I flew

sad fruitful broken true
sad fruitful broken true

memories for miles and miles
summers falls winters and springs
Ruby you take it in
see he's withheld no good thing