Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The antidote...

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THE LULU CHRONICLES
My earthly home.
Want to know what I’ve done this week? I’ve toured five lake homes and one condo. When I walked into the condo, the walls felt like a slow-moving trash compactor.  Each lake house I toured had small yards (which pleased me) but they also had their oddities. Like, who builds a house and puts two bathrooms right next door to each other but none on the second floor? Of course the one thing they each had in common was the million-dollar view out the front window. Ain’t nothing like the calm lapping of water on a shore, unless it’s the calm lapping water on a shore that you own. 
The Hubs has been gone almost eleven months now and I thought it was time to start researching what’s out there. I have questions that will someday soon need answers. The biggest is do I stay in this house that Gary and I shared, or do I sell and move on? I’m not ready to answer that yet, but in order to answer it with any discernment at all, I needed to know what the housing market was like these days. I live in a log house on three acres and a pond. I have a two-car garage, and a barn. Oh, and did I mention I live on three acres? Three acres that begs to be mowed every four days?
Gary and I loved this place. We made our home here. We were a family here. A couple here. Our grown kids love coming here with their kids. It’s the family gathering spot, the old homestead. But truth is, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to move from here either. Actually, I don’t want to be anywhere. Not here. Not there. Nowhere. I don’t want to be here, on this planet, in this universe, this galaxy. The sun gives me no warmth and the moon’s light is wasted on me. For the first time, I can sing the old hymn with my soul bare and my fingers uncrossed. “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing thru, My Treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue; The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door, And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”
Nothing fits. Everything is either too large, too small, too nothing. I’m an alien, a two-headed zombie, a giant trying to sit at the kids’ table; I’m wearing stripes with plaids and white shoes after Labor Day. I do not belong here anymore. I don’t speak the language. The air only bruises my lungs now.
This world is not my home. My home died.
Wait!  Yes, I truly feel this way. But I can’t trust my feelings. My emotions have wrecked my compass. I will not get through this grief journey obeying my emotions. They can’t be trusted. Had I listened to them for the last eleven months, I would have shaved my head and disappeared. Sorrow is like a snakebite and unless you have the antidote... you die.
The antidote? Well... it’s a splintered cross.  It’s an empty tomb. It’s a risen Savior. It’s the whisper in my heart that comes from somewhere not of this world. And, it’s the indescribable flood of the Holy Spirit who wears me like a coat. It’s not feeling like I’m not alone, it’s knowing I’m not alone.
“O, Lord you know I have no friend like you; If heaven weren’t my home, O, Lord what would I do?”
later,
deb

2 comments:

Ted said...

As I read your blog I thought of a small pillow Janet has in what we call our dorm room. It says "There's No Place Like Home, Except Grandma's" I might add "There's No Place Like Home, Except Mom's, Except Grandma's". For kids and grandkids Grandma's is the next best thing to that mansion in the sky, which right now they're really not thinking that much about. However, the second they walk or run through the door they feel and begin to experience what they have been looking forward to all the way there. Security, Hope, Happiness, Peace, Love, Blessings upon Blessings. " There's No Place Like Home, Except Grandma's". Maybe even better at least for a while.

The LuLu Chronicles said...

Thanks, Ted. It's good to be reminded how special we grandparents are to those little ones. I fear the day when their 'social schedule' not longer includes a trip to grandma's. But for now, I'm like candy to them. Love you, friend. Hope you're feeling fine these days.