From Home To House

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Last Fall, I posted a brief video that expressed my contempt for a new place my family and I were moving to. It was called, The "S" On My Chest - Daddy Kryptonite.

And then I fell for the place. It was that good kind of love, the kind that's subtle and sneaks up on you. I scratched out a patch of apartment, I staked my claim, I got my kids completely embedded in the community. The only thing missing was church and a job (but that was my fault not the city where I moved).
And just four weeks ago, I found a great church across the street from the community center where my son volunteered this summer. A great church, that seems to be the right size and has the makings of being a church for all of us, not just me. For a very long time now I've been uprooting repeatedly from place to place looking for a better place not realizing the greatness of a place is what you build in that space and hopefully if no one comes along to tear it down you set down roots and grow and you water and nourish until you have something of awe right in front of you. Over time, I have become a man with no roots who is constantly traumatized by being re-potted, that's right, just like a plant. Looking back on the totality of the experience it has become almost frighteningly clear that this time around God brought me to a place I never wanted to be to teach me how to live.

Now, I sit in front of a computer that I am getting ready to dismantle. The movers will be here in 3 hours to cart it all away. Because there are people still living here, my house is still a home. Having a flat screen television and an iPod dock also helps. My daughter's laughter still hangs in the dining room that is now empty with a legless dinner table sitting in the middle of the floor. The sounds of my teen dropping and banging stuff are gone, but I can still see him dropping stuff everywhere. I see his mess, despite the present spic and span clean, in the bathroom that was once his, now wiped of all traces of him. My daughter's room is most certainly the brightest with the most smiles and a wall plastered with appliques of butterflies and Dora. The pictures I've taken of my family still line the walls and will remain for some time after the movers leave. But they will be down in a week or so or until I get up the desire to take them down to pack them. My room is empty, wide open, cold --- because it actually is cold and because in the place of much strife only lonliness lingers --- cold, stinging, cutting loneliness that tears at me daily and haunts me nightly. And I have to remain in it to close out the affairs that linger here where we once thrived, unbeknownst to both my wife and I.

Last Wednesday, my home had five people in it. In one month it will have none. It will become what it was the day we moved in a house for a new family to hopefully turn into a home. And I am more inspired than ever to turn the new house of walls and stairs and rooms and garage space that awaits me into my home, for now, and maybe for a change, a long time. We'll see how it all shakes out.

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