Leaving home

In the end, one of my last acts of love towards our home was the same as the first: I cleaned the sink.

The accumulated neglect of an entire month spent transitioning, a month before that traveling, and the weeks in the lead-up to that in a flurry of packing and planning … I have not been a homemaker of any real value all summer long. Little things– things not too difficult to keep a handle on– began to elude me. The grimey buildup on the microwave vents. The fingerprints on the walls. The dirt collecting under the baseboards. In the face of culling the contents of our lives, selling off the anchors of our rooms, and emptying what remained into boxes of no more than 50 pounds, I stopped seeing the every day and only had eyes for the must-do.

Which, really is its own kind of goodbye.

Because truly, I never could have walked away from those four walls– from our home– unless I began to see it, in some small way as just a house.

In the beginning, of course, it was just a house. We moved to Washington with a two-year contract (sound familiar?) and I was determined to tough it out exactly 24 months before returning to the familiar comforts of the South. When I first laid eyes on our house, it was good enough. The bedrooms were a decent size, the back hill was roomy enough for running, and it wasn’t too far from the library. Sold.

That first day, I stood in front of the builder-grade stainless steel sink and wiped it clean of the flecks of white dust that marked it as a bit of new construction thrown up quickly amongst the boom of other homes in a desirable, if somewhat remote, suburb. It was a small act of claiming; this is my new space. This is where I will bide my time until I can get on with the business of living our real life.

That was before I taught Mathaus to boil pasta in the kitchen. Before Jack learned to ride a two-wheeler in the drive. Before Birdie stood at the sliding door to watch her Daddy grill chicken. Before John Mark played peek-a-boo behind the dining room curtains. Before Phineas waved to the trash collectors from his bedroom window. Before Mary Hannah read her Bible splayed out on the bottom steps. Before Simon marched horses around the rim of the tub.

Every day, in each small miracle of the mundane, that simple house became a sacred, set apart, peaceful refuge for our family. No longer simply a typical 3 bedroom, 2 and a half bath, 1,500 square foot piece of new construction, our house became something bigger for all of us.

It became a home. It became the place where life– real life— happened.

And so, just as we processed the goodbyes of every loved one in the days and moments leading up to our leaving this week, there was another farewell. There was a easing out of place, and a letting go of something so dear, and so beloved, that it ached in the fiber of all of our beings. We let go of our safe place, blessed it, and prepared it to pass into the hands and hearts of another family.

The Lord has already prepared a new home for us, one that we haven’t yet seen. Our loss is tinged with excitement at the thought of making new memories even as we mourn the things left behind. New halls to fill with laughter, new floors to slide across on stocking feet. Just as I never saw us being so comfortable as to miss that pocket door, that hydrangea bush, some day we will be nostalgic for an as-yet unknown piece of history that will have slipped through our hands. This is the reality of life in any place, beloved or not. It is only ours as long as God wills it. When it is time, we must move on.

So I cleaned the sink. I stood in that same spot I have stood a million times before. I scrubbed, gently, and I remembered. I said thank you. I said goodbye. And then, when I was finished… I set it free.