I don't believe my husband or I shared our little virus that we caught from my husband's mother; we eventually recovered, but it took us three days before we could eat normally; however, we are going to be sharing something else -- our home.
We've always believed that our house is a gift from God. By most of the world's standards, we live in a castle; by US standards, not so. Our home is around 2000 square feet, all on one level, with three bedrooms and two full baths. High ceilings run throughout, with the entryway having a height of about 16 feet and the living/dining area reaching about 12 feet high. Side-by-side windows allow the light to pour into the house, which is very welcome when the sun is lower in the sky in the winter months. After we were married five years ago, we looked for a house for about two months before we found this one; it was actually found on-line by my daughter. Once we saw it, we immediately knew this was the one that was for us. All of the other houses we'd looked at had something major that we'd have to change, or something that we decided we could 'live with', or had no yard or too much yard -- always something that didn't make us want to make an offer on it. But this house, with it's adequate outdoor space that was beautifully landscaped and a large deck that wrapped around the entire back of the house, as well as the fact that it was a single-story home -- ended our search. Even though someone else had made an offer on the house, we were able to get it because our offer didn't hinge on us first selling my husband's Raleigh house.
This coming weekend, we're going to be having a 'tenant', a young lady that attends our church and has been placed in need due to her roommates' having changes in their lives, move in with us. We were contacted and asked if we could open our home to her; we met her, she looked at the space, we talked, and she decided that it would work for her.
Since that decision last Monday, we've been cleaning out the front bedroom, which has been the grandkids' room, holding a twin trundle bed, toys, books, games and stuffed animals. The closet was crammed with crafting supplies that I had brought with me when I relocated from Connecticut (what was I thinking?). The middle bedroom, which served as an office for the first owners of the house and has French doors opening into it, holds a futon, my sewing machine, and an old school desk where I make jewelry, along with boxes of Bob's old 33 1/3 records (no kidding!). Its closet has been stuffed with boxes that he brought from his Raleigh house and which have been sitting on the shelves for 4.5 years! The past week has been a massive effort to sort and toss, and we've been rather successful, also making a huge pile of stuff to sell this Saturday in what is called a "tag sale". Up North, we called such sales "garage sales," although one never was selling the garage, but rather all the stuff for sale in the garage or outside it. So tag sales refer to the tags on the stuff that's for sale either outside or inside one's garage here in the South.
The front bedroom needs only to be cleaned now and it's ready for our tenant, who will really become more like a daughter as she is 31 years old. The room looks really nice, more 'grown-up' definitely. We purchased a storage unit to hold the toys in brightly colored cloth baskets, and it now stores all of the toys that were tossed in a huge plastic bin; we also bought a small shelving unit to hold all of the kids' videos and books, which are now more accessible to them. After rearranging the furniture in the middle bedroom and cleaning out the unnecessary clutter, it also looks really nice.
With a stack of stuff in the entryway awaiting the tag sale on Saturday and a garbage can full of junk hauled away this morning, we feel a bit relieved to finally be rid of stuff that had no meaning or usefulness in our lives. I'm not going to regret parting with it in the least.
We're looking forward to having youth in our home again, and it will challenge us, I'm sure, in many ways. But what is life without challenges? Only through challenges do we grow, and I imagine we're going to be stretched a bit, but I'm glad for the stretching! I can celebrate because I'm alive to feel it! Are you being stretched?
No comments:
Post a Comment