Hearts

 It was an hour past bedtime and I was tired.  Another nighttime routine that would prolong into stories about stories and prayers about dogs who needed to know God's love, and then the pondering of all the mysteries of Heaven and on Earth...and I would try to stay present.  I think I did this particular night.  

Other nights I wish myself toward my room where I can stay selfishly tucked up in my novel or scroll and troll the internet for the perfect queen-sized bed frame on Marketplace or track down a vintage "Barbie minivan" on ebay, because even though it doesn't exist, my artsy daughter wants one for Christmas.  Oh, and it can't be pink.  

The 13-year old sleeps beside me conked out in her drug-induced slumber where she breathes noisily and I wonder if she knows that we love her and that she will forgive us for putting her to sleep every night like this....hoping her body will forgive us, her liver, her heart....

Tonight is the Eve of my Daddy's 72nd birthday.  And I miss him something fierce.  My Daddy has exactly 36 days to hold it together, because when the clock strikes 2023 they will go in with their catheters and balloons and magically slip a life-saving piece of hollow plastic inside his left anterior descending artery so his precious heart can go on beating for all of us who need him here on this Earth.

I'm in North Carolina and things are slow here, but my baby daughter is the slowest documented person in NC it seems, so we have to spend lots of extra time giving her extra time.  Tonight was no exception and we hurried her off to bed as she was busily ctafting at the table in her artistic fury.  We didn't even take the time to stop and see what she had made.  

But morning came and revealed a masterpiece.  

Hope. Peace. Love. Joy.  She wrote it down. She was paying attention.  It actually meant something when we lit that Advent candle at the table and then rushed through dinner. And even though she got up and left it all on the table, that night in bed she prayed with all the hope in the world for a family who is in need of deep peace from a Savior full of unconditional love during a season that gives the greatest joy.  

My broken, banged-up heart needed to hear every utterance from her honest little bleeding heart.  

It's what she does every time.  This was why she was born.  To mend and pray for our family.  

This Christmas, may your greatest gift be within the walls of your home and 

written into the deepest chambers of your beating heart.  

Goodbye House

 We've been busy packing.  Packing our boxes, our stuffies, our silverware and sanity.  It's all being loaded into this truck and will be taken off into the sunset where we will meet it on the other side and hope to mix it somehow with our dreams of the future.  

I have to admit it's been an easier process than I thought it would be.  I thought it would be the catalyst for the third world war, several fires and floods coming up from the Lafayette River.  We only had to knock down one wall, a quarter of the shed, attach two railings, paint the trim in the entie house, install a floor, spread some mulch and toss some grass seed to the birds.  I think my husband did other things that I have only heard about like rewire the house, venture off to Home Depot to buy gadgets I don't know about, and deliver strange items to the scrapyard that I've never set eyes on.  I am positive he was running on fumes and a prayer plus the remains of the Dr Pepper he drank at midnight.  

How do you say goodbye to a house that has witnessed all the first steps of your children, endless walks on Summer nights by the river with the big ball of orange setting in the pink sky again and again, season after season?

The walls have heard every utterance of all the words spoken, both loud and whispered, proud and humble, weary and worn, happy and sad. 

These wooden floors have absorbed every tiptoe and stomp, every bounce and claw, scrape and drop, push and fall, drag and spill.  

Spills of water, of milk, of sweat, of tears, of blood.  

The happy laughter, screams and cries have been held as captive secrets, stored in the attic with the other 100 year old skeletons, and locked with a key in an old worn treasure box that will never be opened again by any living soul on this Green Earth. 

And we march on toward the goal of stuffing it all in the truck and moving forward.  Because we can't look back.  The papers have been signed and the new owners are coming. The winds all have shifted farther South.  Yet we linger...for there are things that we can't let go of and they will stick with us until the very last second where we pull away and wave goodbye and only then will we shed the bittersweet tear because we have ignored it for too long.  

I prayed that God would somehow let me leave this place with the perfect dichotmy of loving to teach the hearts of little ones... but looking forward to homeschooling the littlest heart of my own, of missing my people just enough, but excited to leap into the unknown grabbing at invisible hands.  

And He has done just that.  

So...Goodbye House.  Goodbye Virginia.

I will miss your soothing waters, sandy beaches, balmy nights, and warm ways. 

But mostly...I will miss the friends you have provided for us at every stage of life, 

their outpouring of love for us, prayers for us, singing over us.  

At our very best and at our very worst.