From what I remember about my parents' conversations, I lived in three places as an infant and toddler. Then, due to Daddy's job, we lived in three more the next 12 years, all of which I remember, especially the last one, the home I left to be married. But my parents moved after my first year of marriage, again due to Daddy's work, and I never had a "home" to go home to.
Things were not much different after we married, at least not at first. Our first home was a 10 x 50 trailer we bought used from another "preaching couple" at Florida College after that student got his four year certificate (it was a pre-degree FC) and moved on to his first fulltime preaching job. It was tiny and either hot or cold, depending upon the weather. One summer we turned off the AC while we were away for a weekend and came home to find our table candles, slumped over on the table, melted but still shaped like candles that had simply fallen asleep. The particle board countertop had begun to swell around the kitchen sink, bits of the top layer of Formica flaking off to expose the damp particle board, and one morning I woke to mushrooms growing around the tap. Keith replaced that countertop before we left, selling the trailer to yet another FC "preacher student."
Our second home was a church house, a small shoebox of a house a couple of blocks from the meetinghouse in north central Illinois. I saw snow for the first time and learned how to drive on ice pack to buy groceries. Though the house was small, the third bedroom barely larger than a walk-in closet, the pantry was huge and one I have often wished to have again. It also held the washer and dryer and water softener, but the shelves that went from waist to ceiling high on three walls were exactly what I later wished for when I had a growing family. I also had my first experience with mice, surrounded as we were by cornfields. But the backyard looked onto a drive-in theater, the screen of which faced our back door. If we had had a speaker we could have seen a free movie every night.
Our first child was born there and was only 11 weeks old when we moved to our third home, a nice brick house in the piedmont of South Carolina, only an hour from the Blue Ridge Parkway. Keith had to buy it while I was back home with a newborn and so he did not see a few things that might have had me hesitating. The kitchen was a long walk through the family room around a poorly placed wall (you wonder what some architects are thinking) to the dining area, and there was a huge, ugly ink spot on hallway carpet, a wall to wall so it could not easily be replaced. We couldn't afford to do anything with the house so we just made do, and our second child was born there. We have pictures of them both in the snow which is the only way they know it.
Our next move came three years later to another church home, this one a brand new double wide next to the church and behind a cemetery in North Florida. Brand new doublewides look pretty amazing until you have to do your first repair and discover that nothing is square and nothing standard will fit--you have to go to a Mobile Home Supply instead. We had an "open house" one Sunday night after services because the church members had never seen this place and we thought it only fair that they got a look. I kept snacks coming on the table, and the coffee pot burbling as they trooped through, all 100+ of them.
The next move was only about forty miles northeast from there, still in North Florida which we came to realize was not like anywhere else in Florida—we actually had some winter. We had moved so quickly that the only place we could find at first was a filthy old frame house in poor repair. But it had a living room large enough for my studio grand piano and was the only place that did. The church ladies helped us clean, one of them so grossed out that she took regular visits to a trash can to throw up. The men made a moving caravan and we were moved in one day. We had neither running water nor heat for the first week, which was also the first week of January. I remember all of us sitting over breakfast with coats and hats on, our "breath fog" clouding the table. Even with normal utilities, things were precarious. Finally, after the transformer went bad and ruined our electric skillet, washer, vacuum cleaner, and television, we decided we needed better housing.
The only thing we could afford was another doublewide, and one of the men in the church allowed us to live on a piece of his property "for improvements" rather than rent, which included us paying for a well and septic tank, and tearing down and hauling off an old rundown frame house bit by bit. Four years later we moved our home across the county to the five acres we lived on for the next thirty-eight years. That piece of land took our literal blood, sweat, and tears. We had adventures and misadventures, fun times and harrowing times, most of which my longtime readers have read about. We learned things we had never even suspected that we needed to know, and sometimes I am amazed that we lived through it all. That was the closest thing we had to a "home."
Then we got old. Keith could no longer work the property like he had before. Work that had taken a Saturday in the early years, now took three days, and we no longer had live-in help—they grew up and left us! We lived 40-45 minutes from town, depending upon where we had to go—which included all the doctors and church--and the trip itself was becoming tiring. Neither of us see well at night and I can no longer drive at all. Then my brilliant eye doctor retired and left me with one I am sure was smart, but was in his early thirties and inexperienced with someone like me. Our time here below is becoming short and we needed to be near someone who could watch out for us, and I needed another world class doctor. So now we are here in Tampa, Temple Terrace to be exact, in what we hope will be our last house—a real house, something I never even thought I would ever have again.
So how do I feel about It? When I look at old pictures of the place up north, especially when I see my boys playing on the tree swing, playing baseball in the field, climbing trees or standing at the "fort"—a group of huge old live oaks that made almost a complete room between their trunks—or see my grandsons in similar pictures with a grin on their faces as they discover what it might be like to live in the country, I get a pang deep in my heart. But my better sense tells me that this is for the best and I still have memories to cherish. After all, God told Abraham and Sarah to leave a home they had lived in for over twenty years longer than I lived up there. It had to be hard—at least I knew where I was going while they did not.
But they understood where their real home was. These all died in faith without having received the promises, but they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But they now desire a better place — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them (Heb 11:13-16).
We must all be careful not to become too attached to this world. Thinking of any place here as "home" can lead to temptations we can hardly bear. Peter reminds us, And if you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man's work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear (1Pet 1:17). Jacob called his life "a pilgrimage" (Gen 47:9), and Paul tells us our citizenship is in Heaven (Phil 3:20). Don't get too attached, they all seem to be saying.
"This world is not my home," we like to sing. Are we telling the truth?
Hear my prayer, LORD, and listen to my cry for help; do not be silent at my tears. For I am a foreigner residing with You, a temporary resident like all my fathers. Turn Your angry gaze from me so that I may be cheered up before I die and am gone (Ps 39:12-13).
Things were not much different after we married, at least not at first. Our first home was a 10 x 50 trailer we bought used from another "preaching couple" at Florida College after that student got his four year certificate (it was a pre-degree FC) and moved on to his first fulltime preaching job. It was tiny and either hot or cold, depending upon the weather. One summer we turned off the AC while we were away for a weekend and came home to find our table candles, slumped over on the table, melted but still shaped like candles that had simply fallen asleep. The particle board countertop had begun to swell around the kitchen sink, bits of the top layer of Formica flaking off to expose the damp particle board, and one morning I woke to mushrooms growing around the tap. Keith replaced that countertop before we left, selling the trailer to yet another FC "preacher student."
Our second home was a church house, a small shoebox of a house a couple of blocks from the meetinghouse in north central Illinois. I saw snow for the first time and learned how to drive on ice pack to buy groceries. Though the house was small, the third bedroom barely larger than a walk-in closet, the pantry was huge and one I have often wished to have again. It also held the washer and dryer and water softener, but the shelves that went from waist to ceiling high on three walls were exactly what I later wished for when I had a growing family. I also had my first experience with mice, surrounded as we were by cornfields. But the backyard looked onto a drive-in theater, the screen of which faced our back door. If we had had a speaker we could have seen a free movie every night.
Our first child was born there and was only 11 weeks old when we moved to our third home, a nice brick house in the piedmont of South Carolina, only an hour from the Blue Ridge Parkway. Keith had to buy it while I was back home with a newborn and so he did not see a few things that might have had me hesitating. The kitchen was a long walk through the family room around a poorly placed wall (you wonder what some architects are thinking) to the dining area, and there was a huge, ugly ink spot on hallway carpet, a wall to wall so it could not easily be replaced. We couldn't afford to do anything with the house so we just made do, and our second child was born there. We have pictures of them both in the snow which is the only way they know it.
Our next move came three years later to another church home, this one a brand new double wide next to the church and behind a cemetery in North Florida. Brand new doublewides look pretty amazing until you have to do your first repair and discover that nothing is square and nothing standard will fit--you have to go to a Mobile Home Supply instead. We had an "open house" one Sunday night after services because the church members had never seen this place and we thought it only fair that they got a look. I kept snacks coming on the table, and the coffee pot burbling as they trooped through, all 100+ of them.
The next move was only about forty miles northeast from there, still in North Florida which we came to realize was not like anywhere else in Florida—we actually had some winter. We had moved so quickly that the only place we could find at first was a filthy old frame house in poor repair. But it had a living room large enough for my studio grand piano and was the only place that did. The church ladies helped us clean, one of them so grossed out that she took regular visits to a trash can to throw up. The men made a moving caravan and we were moved in one day. We had neither running water nor heat for the first week, which was also the first week of January. I remember all of us sitting over breakfast with coats and hats on, our "breath fog" clouding the table. Even with normal utilities, things were precarious. Finally, after the transformer went bad and ruined our electric skillet, washer, vacuum cleaner, and television, we decided we needed better housing.
The only thing we could afford was another doublewide, and one of the men in the church allowed us to live on a piece of his property "for improvements" rather than rent, which included us paying for a well and septic tank, and tearing down and hauling off an old rundown frame house bit by bit. Four years later we moved our home across the county to the five acres we lived on for the next thirty-eight years. That piece of land took our literal blood, sweat, and tears. We had adventures and misadventures, fun times and harrowing times, most of which my longtime readers have read about. We learned things we had never even suspected that we needed to know, and sometimes I am amazed that we lived through it all. That was the closest thing we had to a "home."
Then we got old. Keith could no longer work the property like he had before. Work that had taken a Saturday in the early years, now took three days, and we no longer had live-in help—they grew up and left us! We lived 40-45 minutes from town, depending upon where we had to go—which included all the doctors and church--and the trip itself was becoming tiring. Neither of us see well at night and I can no longer drive at all. Then my brilliant eye doctor retired and left me with one I am sure was smart, but was in his early thirties and inexperienced with someone like me. Our time here below is becoming short and we needed to be near someone who could watch out for us, and I needed another world class doctor. So now we are here in Tampa, Temple Terrace to be exact, in what we hope will be our last house—a real house, something I never even thought I would ever have again.
So how do I feel about It? When I look at old pictures of the place up north, especially when I see my boys playing on the tree swing, playing baseball in the field, climbing trees or standing at the "fort"—a group of huge old live oaks that made almost a complete room between their trunks—or see my grandsons in similar pictures with a grin on their faces as they discover what it might be like to live in the country, I get a pang deep in my heart. But my better sense tells me that this is for the best and I still have memories to cherish. After all, God told Abraham and Sarah to leave a home they had lived in for over twenty years longer than I lived up there. It had to be hard—at least I knew where I was going while they did not.
But they understood where their real home was. These all died in faith without having received the promises, but they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But they now desire a better place — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them (Heb 11:13-16).
We must all be careful not to become too attached to this world. Thinking of any place here as "home" can lead to temptations we can hardly bear. Peter reminds us, And if you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man's work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear (1Pet 1:17). Jacob called his life "a pilgrimage" (Gen 47:9), and Paul tells us our citizenship is in Heaven (Phil 3:20). Don't get too attached, they all seem to be saying.
"This world is not my home," we like to sing. Are we telling the truth?
Hear my prayer, LORD, and listen to my cry for help; do not be silent at my tears. For I am a foreigner residing with You, a temporary resident like all my fathers. Turn Your angry gaze from me so that I may be cheered up before I die and am gone (Ps 39:12-13).
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