Ten Years.

I’ve lived in this house longer than I’ve lived anywhere in my adult life. 

In the ten years before this house, I moved four times. 

At least once a year I think about selling it. An 80-something-year-old house sometimes requires more than I feel like I can give it.  

Twice, I’ve put it on the market, only to pull it back off within a month. 

More than once, someone rang my doorbell wanting to buy this house. And more than once, I strongly considered selling it to them. 

God has closed the door every single time. EVERY SINGLE TIME. And when the door closes, I wonder what is wrong with me that I ever for one moment considered selling it? Why would I ever? That would be like selling my own skeleton. 

Seven different miracles happened that allowed me to even have this house in the first place. And I am so grateful. I adore this house. You don’t throw away seven whole miracles. 

Ten years ago when I saw it for the first time, I knew — KNEW — that this was supposed to be mine. We had a connection, this house and I. It was so full of love and light. God gave it to us. God protected us here. 

I moved out of a (perfectly nice) house that was filled with terror and misery and danger and nightmares and demons. Demons are real… and they resided in that house. The house itself, the bricks and boards and whatnot, were solid and nice,  but there was a darkness there that never went away no matter how many lightbulbs I turned on. All of them… I would turn on all the lights, and the air in the house would still be thick and dark. Even when the HDIC (head demon in charge) moved out, he didn’t take all the darkness with him. 

And then God gave us this lovely little house the color of sunshine, as if he fully intended for us to live happily ever after, because how could you do anything but live happily ever after in a cottage as cute as this one? Thank you, God. I felt like this house was covered by a special, invisible, God-sized blanket that protected His four (cherished and adored) girls inside. That’s no small thing. 

There have to be very strong warrior angels encamped around this house. There’s no other answer. Nothing ever got to us here. 

I wish it had all been happily ever after, but a house full of very traumatized females navigating teenage drama and middle school angst, wisdom teeth and braces, BOYS, bullying, sharing a bathroom, all kinds of tests and tryouts, first cars, college applications and sorority rushes, is kind of a tinder box. At times. To say the least. If God keeps all our tears — and he does — he has to have a whole separate three-car garage just to hold the Home Depot five gallon buckets full of tears that came straight out of 518.

Lots of healing was and is required. Lots of healing has happened in this house, in these ten years. Lots more should have happened. Is there ever really a moment when we have quite enough healing? Not until heaven, I’m guessing. But this house just stood here calmly sheltering us during the best and worst of times (even when I had the audacity to think about selling it). 

I bought this house so my girls would have a nice place to grow up. And then they freaking went and grew up. In the blink of an eye, man. I used to think ten years was a long time, and it is not. Because I blinked, and my girls are grown. And this house has seen us through it. We moved here when we were 44, 15, 10 and 4, and now THREE of us are grownups. One of them has a masters degree, even. She went from a 15-year-old with braces on her teeth to being a grownup with two degrees and a real job. Just like that. 

Bless this little house. Somehow, after ten years of us, it’s still standing.