If you don’t like something, change it.
If you can’t change it, change your attitude. – Dr. Maya Angelou
I opened the garage door and the place was empty. Except for
a few naked cabinets lined up against the far wall and beneath the window to my
right, the garage was empty from the floor to the rafters. Aside from a couple
of stray spider webs, there was nothing to see except a few old water stains
from before the roof had been redone.
I’ve never seen the garage or home this way. My folks moved
into the house in Federal Way when I was away to college, and so I had never
seen it bereft of furnishings, possessions, or the bric-a-brac of life. I expected
to hear the echo of footsteps as I stepped into the house from the garage, but
it was solidly built, and the carpet absorbed the sound of my sneakers quite
well.
My eyes scanned the family room – the “blue room” as we
called it – like Doppler radar. There was nothing to see. The television was
gone, as were the tables, chairs, doilies, speakers, and everything else that
made the room unique to its owner before he’d died.
The ugliest speaker cable you could imagine – the one that
snaked its way from the entertainment center, up and over the casements of both
the door to the garage and the utility closet, and down again to the back of
the room – was gone. It had looked like an anorexic python in both color and
form, and now it had slithered away to feed on discarded computer mice at the
local landfill.
It’s funny. I had a strange sense of being at home, and yet
not being there at the same time. You see, I had never lived in the house in
Federal Way, and so it never quite had the feel of home. My childhood memories
weren’t there. When people ask where I’m from, I tell them Seattle. If they
know the city, I specify Ballard or, more specifically, Crown Hill. That’s
where I grew up; that’s where you’d look to find my heart.
It’s in the little Cracker Jack box of a house (about 600
square feet of living space) where I and the rest of our family of six shared
life (and one bathroom). It’s where I played stick-ball on the corner with Mark
and Roger from across the street, and Jimmy from around the corner. It’s where
a kindly neighbor suggested I choke up on the bat as it was a bit too heavy for
those noodles I had for arms. Ignoring his advice, I struck out, because I
couldn’t admit to myself that perhaps he was right.
Home is where the heart is. Today, my heart is in Mount
Vernon. To be honest, I’ve never struggled with heart transplants. I feel at
home wherever I go. To put it another way, I’ve always been a sojourner. I’ve
never settled down for any great length of time. I’m not exactly a nomad, but
I’ve picked up and moved along regularly enough to know that it is best to take
one’s heart wherever one goes, so I’ve learned to be at home wherever I am.
So I wandered through the house in Federal Way, now empty of
all its stuff. Our family pulled out as much as any of us could, what with each
of us having our own households, and we fingered our way through the treasures
and mementoes as we came across them. Some we kept. Some we boxed up for
storage. Some we delivered to charities and second hand shops. And when we had
done what we could, we hired a crew to come in and, out of our sight, dispose
of everything else as faithfully and lovingly as only strangers would be able
to. They did for us what we could not, or dared not try to do for ourselves.
“In my father’s house are many rooms,” says Jesus. I suspect
they will echo until we fill them with the furniture of love, joy, and peace –
the same as what God expects us to fill the rooms of our lives with here in
this life.
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