House and Home

Most of you know that my house has been on the market since last June. (I know...mine and everyone else's in greater North America, right?) I determined when I let the realtor put a For Sale sign in my yard that she might be the tour-giver and detail-overseer, but the real realtor is the good Lord. He knows the right buyer for this house and He (apparently ALONE) knows the right time for it to sell.

I had rather hoped to avoid long drives on icy roads, overnight stays at friends' houses and hotels, tires worn bald, and frequent dates with the gas pump. But, as my 2012 verse states, His ways are not mine...so I have driven on ice, stayed at friends' houses and in hotels, worn my tires bald, and (in my humble opinion) been the best girlfriend a gas pump could ever hope to have.

My house is being shown twice on Monday and I have absolutely no emotion about it. While it's not exactly been a high-traffic show home, I've gotten used to cleaning for a showing and then going back to life as normal. They are the periodic kick in the hiney to give the house a good polish - and then to keep it a while longer. I've prayed about the showing and know that if either of these mysterious people who walk through the front door are the right ones, it will sell. And if they are not...I'll continue to live the commuter life and wait. I'm okay with it either way.

Having said that, God has been stirring my heart a bit about saying goodbye to this house. About reliving a decade's worth of memories that have come and gone within these walls. About being ready to pack the props of furniture and accessories that have adorned life here and situate them within new walls to adorn a new life.

The prospect of picking out new walls to call mine has been a huge task. I've toured more than a handful of homes and have easily imagined life in some while walking quickly out of others. The last few days I've toggled between two screens of pictures of two different homes, closing my eyes and trying to imagine if either of them is my new home.

Home.

I remember the day in March 2010 when I walked in the back door of this house, dragging a suitcase behind me, and knew it was no longer home. I'd spent the weekend visiting Isaac at his brother's home and we'd planned our life together. On a Saturday night, in a CVS parking lot, I sobbed on his shirt and said goodbye and cried all the way home, feeling as though my family had just driven away in the opposite direction.

And when I walked in this house that had been my home two days prior, it was nothing but a house. I called Ronda and said, "For the first time since I've been out on my own, I'm in my own house and it isn't home. It's not home because he's not here and home is where he is."

God has graciously (and painstakingly slowly) healed my heart from home being the place that holds Isaac. But even after that healing took place, this wasn't home. It was still a house - with memories of a time it was home - and the dream of a new place, a mysterious place still, that will be home.

So I'm ready. I've begun to say goodbye and God knows how long that process needs to take for my heart. He knows what four-walled structure out there somewhere will not only be the house that fits the blend of furniture I own, but the haven that will be a home.