Slow Goodbyes: The Master

If you're running behind on blog posts, you might not know that the last three days of last week, I started "saying goodbye" to our house by reminiscing about the memories of each room. I process in words and tears, and since it's not time for tears yet, I'm going ahead with the words. I want to someday look back on this season and know that I fully appreciated this home and all that it represents. I want no regrets. And for me to have no regrets, there must be words.

Today I focus my goodbye on one of my favorite rooms in this house: our master bedroom. It was the last room we overhauled, and it still feels like a retreat every time I walk in. {Goal: reproduce this feeling in a new house.}

Back when my grandparents lived in this house, our master bedroom was sometimes the room they used as a master and sometimes it was just a spare bedroom. My mom could probably fill me in on all the purposes it served when she was young and lived in these walls. But since I moved in back in 2000, this room has served several functions. {Have you noticed I tend to repurpose entire ROOMS at alarming rates??}

For the four years I shared this home with a roommate {two different roommates, actually, in that span of time}, this room was our combined office space. It was the biggest bedroom in the house and therefore easily lent itself to shared space. This is where I wrote the FIRST book I "published" - not the Advent book, but one I wrote as a Christmas gift for my family and friends the year I had no money to buy gifts. I spent hours bent over my desk in a rather uncomfortable folding chair, pounding out words on a keyboard.

After I had the place to myself, the room rotated between office and guest room and craft room. And then I got the idea to make it my master bedroom. I felt I deserved a proper master with a big girl bed and, well, my secret dream: all things purple.

I knew most guys hated purple, so I figured if I one day got married, my husband wouldn't be wild about a purple room. But since he had not yet arrived on the scene, I could decide to have a purple paradise, and did I ever have a purple paradise. Three shades of purple covered every square inch of that massive room. My dad put up a chair rail and my boss's wife came over to teach me how to measure out and paint thick two-toned stripes on the lower half. I got a king-size bed and made that place my purple sanctuary. Loved that room so much.

I prayed a lot of prayers for Mr. Missing from that bed. I pulled an all-nighter the night of the Kansas tornado, hugging the blankets and watching The Weather Channel report live, trying to catch views of what was left of the town from the piercing camera lights. I read books and journaled, stayed in bed until noon, and sobbed bitter, ugly tears in the desert days. I paced around the bed, got on my face to intercede, and begged God to teach me what I needed to learn.

Then I met and married Ryan, and it became our room. We squeezed in an extra dresser and hung more clothes in the closet, and it became ours. Our little haven. The place where I could wake up every morning and see the face I'd prayed for right next to me.

And as I imagined, he was not wild about the purple. But bless his heart, he put up with it for two and a half years before we finally overhauled it last year into a beach paradise. Goodbye purple. Goodbye stripes. Hello blue and tan. Hello shells and sand. Hello white curtains.

It really does feel like paradise, and I really do have plans to recreate it as best I can in our new place.

It's pretty bare right now, just sporting our lamps and furniture. All our pictures have been packed away, and all the clothes we absolutely do not need in this season have been boxed up. It feels strange to walk into its emptiness, but I am so glad we followed through with recreating this room last year. It was the right decision!

I will miss this room and all the memories made here, but I am looking forward to our new master - one with an even bigger closet and a bathroom attached to it. Beach paradise 2.0 coming soon!!