Sandra Heska King

daring to open doors

When You Need to Seam Home

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HOME

 

The men are laying new vinyl today. “Do you want the seam here… or there?” asks the one in charge.

And I’m thinking, I don’t care. I won’t be living with it. This will no longer my home. I’m losing my sense of home. I’m already separating from it like a dying person begins to separate from the present life.

But I ask what he thinks, and he says if we run the seam east to west, we need to walk across it, but north to south is less obtrusive. I notice that where the old vinyl is lifting (and where I often trip) is running east to west.

“It sounds good to me. You’re the expert,” I say. And I retreat to the sofa, out of the way. This is my now. Jumbled up and torn up. With messes and delays. Interruptions and separation. Decisions and more decisions. Fast food and doughnuts. Grieving and anticipation.

Nothing is working seamlessly. This is not the original crew that was to lay the flooring. But the first day was postponed because somebody’s grandfather died. The next day someone quit, and there was a scramble for a backup. Now we need to postpone the carpet installation, and other projects need to be realigned and reassigned. The time clock is running, and I can’t envision what my not yet might look like.

“I moved from palm trees to maple trees on a tidal wave of gratitude,” Christie Purifoy wrote in Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons.”

I’m trying not to be jealous of Maplehurst, of Christie’s coming home. Because we are leaving home. We’re leaving our 150-year-old-plus farmhouse, my husband’s childhood home, where he brought me to meet his parents 45 years ago, where we replanted our roots over 25 years ago since moving back to Michigan.

My heart hurt when my inlaws sold this house. Who knew we’d one day redeem it?

Continued over at GraceTable where I try to seam together thoughts of home. . . 

ATLANTIC AT SUNSET

The Atlantic Ocean at sunset

Moving in the stillness,

Sandy

Linking with Jennifer and Holley today. It’s been a while.

Comments

  1. Once, as I was preparing my heart to move out of a house I had cherished, a friend told me “Only by letting go (of this house), another one that is more beautiful and more suitable for now can come into your life”. It helped to let go. And it applies to more than houses. There’s time for everything. And nobody can take away our memories. Blessings to you at this time. Better and even more beautiful things are on the way.

  2. I so much appreciate you sharing this difficult journey with us. It is difficult to leave so much of our history behind and this “in between” season would be likely driving me crazy. I trust the Lord will one day allow you to see His plan and purpose in the waiting, in the delays, and perhaps make more sense of it all than it may be possible to have today. Blessings on you!

    • I see now how His plan unfolded in the past, so there’s rest in that. There’s wondering in the waiting, though–is this the right decision? We check off the list of pros and cons again. And no doors have slammed shut. So, yes… the affirmation is yet to come. Thanks so much for waiting and walking with me, Pam.

  4. Oh it is a big thing … saying goodbye not just to a house, but to the special moments lived in each room, the places in the neighborhood, the corners in the garden … I am getting goosebumps – reliving here the saying Farewell to the house of my childhood. Yet – the moments are trasured in our hearts – we’re reliving them together in the new house of my parents, that already has treasured moments connected to it – Where your heart is…
    A process of letting go … tears will be shared … And however, we’re somehow “trespassers” here on earth, heavenly home being the final destination. One step at a time – I look forward of hearing about the new house – when the time comes …

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