For Wilshire Baptist Church
LeAnn and I recently celebrated an anniversary. Not our wedding day, but the 13th anniversary of the day we moved into our house, and we’re content for it to be the only house we have together this side of forever.
April 30 was the day. It was a crazy busy time: getting married after age 50, selling our two separate houses, moving most of our stuff into storage and ourselves into a small apartment, buying a vacant lot and talking Wilshire friend Steve Conner into jumping into the adventure with us as our builder. In fact, there’s a lot of Wilshire influence here with reclaimed wood floors from Pat Hicks, Barbara Floyd helping us decorate with all our stuff, and David Coleman getting our little plot of land ready for the lawn and gardens we’ve enjoyed working.
We were too busy with life this year for a special celebration as we’ve sometimes done in the past, but we did remember what day it was and recalled the new start the move-in day signified, coming just nine months after we married. The house planning and design process started before our wedding day, so it’s all bundled up together.
The house has held up well, although coming up on 13 years there have been things that have needed to be fixed or updated. Appliances quit, storms loosen siding and shingles, technology becomes obsolete. We’ve found lots of good help, sometimes contacting the original subcontractors because they know the house well. We’ve had Steve, David and Barbara come to make adjustments or switch some things out. On a few occasions, when I’m feeling brave, I’ve done some work myself, although I tend to stay away from plumbing and electricity, especially on weekends when DIY mistakes are more costly and ERs are more crowded.
This house is now the second-longest place I’ve lived, including four during childhood (two of which I have no recollection but have visited) and an assortment of dorm rooms, apartments, condos and rent houses, each rich with memories: growing up in Richardson and playing on Salem; going to school and learning about life, death and love on Shady Creek. Being both studious and immature in Waco with roommates at Kokernot Hall and University Place, and then working nights and adulting on Washington Avenue. Coming back to the Dallas area to settle down and learn how to be a couple on Carlisle, San Jacinto and Lakeland. Experiencing burglary and danger on Glasgow, and finding peace and quiet on Galway. There was heartbreak and loss there too, which is one of the reasons the house on Avenue E is so special to me. It was like God led me to LeAnn and then gently nudged us into this house and life together.
Of course, a house is just a structure. What happens inside determines whether it will be a home or not, and the house has been a very good place for us to create a home. It’s where we’ve blended our separate lives and created a larger family together, with LeAnn’s parents, aunts and cousins, and my parents, sibling, nieces and nephews. We’ve hosted family, friends, church folks and neighbors; we’ve thrown open the doors and let total strangers walk through on holiday home tours. We’ve had squirrels and rabbits in the yard, doves and robins in the hanging baskets, kittens under the porch and geckos on the walls.
“In my father’s house there are many dwelling places,” Jesus said of heaven, and so it has been in this earthly life too. Thanks to an early, firm foundation in the “house of the Lord,” I have felt God’s presence and shelter in the many places I’ve dwelled. I have faith that when I leave this house and home LeAnn and I built together, the best of all dwellings will be waiting.