When I pulled up to 15539 Keppen in Allen Park last December,
I instinctively expected to see the faces of our older girls peering out the
window at me, waving me in. I expected to see a Dora big wheel parked in the
driveway or a tiny picnic table retired from its summer duties, collecting the
first snow of the season.
Instead, I saw a “For Sale” sign in the yard. Instead, I saw
an empty porch, an abandoned driveway, and tightly closed blinds. No signs of
the life we once knew there.
But I quickly remembered what we were selling and what we weren’t.
Our family memories weren’t for sale. I didn’t pack up those. And the mistakes
made, lessons learned, forgiveness sought, and gospel seeds sown weren’t for sale
either. So I let our house go in that moment, knowing God had used it for his
purposes in our life and that season was over.
When we first moved into our love shack on Keppen, we hadn’t
been married a year. We shared our frozen wedding cake on our 1-year
anniversary, seated on our slip-covered couch in the living room. That house
was our proving ground as newlyweds, as employees, as church members, as
evangelists, and as new parents. So much of the work God has done in our life
started within those four walls.
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| First Anniversary |
We learned to work together on managing a house and its projects
and responsibilities and eventually fell into a good rhythm of what became my
duties and what became Matt’s. It was one of our first partnerships. We learned
to wait for things we wanted that we couldn’t afford (or to give up wishing for
them!). And, we saw God provide through hard work and the generous gifts of friends
and family.
We cut our teeth on hospitality in that house. We had hyper
teenage boys from the youth group spend the night. We hosted playdates with new
moms, dinner clubs, recovering addicts that needed loved and counseled, discipleship
sessions for new and hurting Christians during our kids naptime or after dinner,
neighborhood dinners, evangelistic Bible studies, college and career Bible
studies and lunches and birthday parties, and even provided them with a couch to crash
from their crazy schedules, question-packed lunches with older godly women, and
regular community group meetings where we hammered out applying the Bible to
our lives.
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| One of our many beloved Community Groups |
The stories those walls could tell if they could talk!
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| Stella's nursery turned big-girl room |
Tear drops might still stain the kitchen countertop from when
I was mindlessly scrubbing it because I had to do something after finding out
that I’d lost our baby after almost 20 weeks of pregnancy. And I can still see
the dozens of cards from church members lining the top of our piano in the dining room, sharing in our grief, admonishing us with Scripture, and sharing their own
stories of God’s faithfulness to them through unfulfilled expectations.
We loved that house. It had a warmth and coziness we haven’t
been able to replicate here in our Florida home. The charm of the curved front sidewalk
and the glow of the light from the living room wall sconces in the evening. If
I close my eyes and listen hard enough I can still hear what the cries of a
hungry baby sound like there at night, the pitter-patter of first steps on
those hardwood floors, the frustrated turning of the old, loose door knob to go
upstairs to our bedroom, and the echoes of excitement when Daddy came home for
the day. God provided our love shack for us in an amazingly generous way, and
he continued to provide for us the entire time we owned it. Not just for our material needs, but
with all we needed for life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)
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| Ruby as a new walker |
And as of yesterday, it is ours no more.
But, for the past nearly three years now, we’ve lived in a
different proving ground, learning many new lessons and re-learning old ones. God
isn’t done with us yet. We’ve discovered that our homes here are primarily training
us for our heavenly home. Whether we have happy or hard home lives. Christian
or antagonistic family members. Beautiful or fixer-upper surroundings. It’s all
meant to help us on to him. It’s all meant to fit us for heaven. To make us
more like him. To make us long for our eternal home, but also to encourage us
with grace along the way.
And if God can help us find such love, hope, and happiness in a 900-square-foot house in cloudy and cold Michigan, I can only imagine how
beautiful and peaceful and perfect our eternal home will be. Because it will be
with him.
“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be
his people, and God himself will be with
them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will
be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has
passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything
new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
(Revelation 21:3-5)
