I'm listening to Tobymac. He's cool. He's a Christian hip hop artist, and I've been listening to him for a while. His music leads me to this little place in my mind, where many nights ago, I was up late reading a webcomic called "the-white board". It's about a polor bear who runs a paintball shop in Alaska, but that's not really important.
What matters is, it's linked to a little slice of peaceful emotion. Where I lived in a house that I was happy in, in a neighborhood that felt like home, with my family always near at hand. In a basement that I was taught in and really grew up at. Not that I remember all those years of homeschool in that basement very clearly... But it was home.
Not where I'm at now. Right now I'm in a new chapter in life where I have to ford new rivers, face old and new fears, adjust to new paces and places. Lord the last eight months.... They've been little more than pain. tsk tsk tsk.....
So let's start a year ago. At the beginning of 2009. I got a form in the mail from my church to register on this crazy trip to LA for 8 days. I thought "That's farther then I've ever been, longer then I've gone without family", I shredded it. I thought on it for a while, and a little note ("We think you should join us! Hannah.J") attached to the form caused me to think farther than "I can't do it". I called up Mellisa our youth pastor an hour after I shredded the form. Got a new form set, and thought some more. Fear gripped me, but friends affirmed I'd make it alright, and one guy told me he'd go the whole way right along side me. (God I wish he could've made it, but that's another story) So six months before the trip I make the commitment to go. Hold that thought and change subjects with me for a moment.
That was when I was living in Des Moines Wa, and at this point my family needs to decide what to do regarding my Grandfather who is in faltering health. My mother spent easily half of her every day over at his house tending to his needs, and we'd visit regularly to tend to the yard or house. Options: Move him in with us. Move him into assisted living. Move in with him.
Back to previous subject, thanks for your patience.
I didn't sleep well for those 6 months before that trip. Every night I spent anywhere from forty minutes to two hours tossing and turning in my bed thinking the trip over. Waiting for sleep to finally come, I would stare at all the familiar sights... My ceiling, closet doors, posters, corner posts of my bed, this wall, that wall, my hands. I would do speed drills of field stripping my pistol with my eyes closed, would do push ups, sit ups, crunches, stretches. But I was committed and would hold my course even if it should kill me.
Hopping Trains again.
My family decides to move in with my Grandfather in West Seattle, mainly so my Mother doesn't spend so much time away from her family at his house. Or doesn't have to do twice the house work everyday on top on a consistently exhausting job. I was excited to move back to West Seattle, back to my home town, back to something familiar like it used to be when I was little. I was so distraught over moving to Des Moines now 10 years ago, it would be nice to get back home.
Take my hand, and a step back to our last thought.
I went on the trip and I never had a moment of fear while I was on it, made some amazing new steps in my life, made amazing new friends, and had so much fun, took in so many new sights, I didn't want to go home. I spent three days on the road, got a double blow out on the way there. Spent four days in LA at the most amazing youth conference I've ever been to (DCLA 09) , and three days back home with another blow out. I really didn't want to go home, not back to the same problems I tried to get off my chest at that retreat. I felt victorious.
I survived the adventure, and was back to the safety I held precious for six months before that trip. But at the same time I was frustrated now seeing that safety wasn't worth as much as the trouble it was tied to, and challenging fears and taking steps in faith to grow away from what bothers me was so much more precious. (If that made any sense).
When I arrived home though, it was closer, and farther than what I had imagined. I wouldn't ever see those familiar evening sights from my room. I was moved into my Grandfathers house.
Since then things have gotten more and more difficult. Moving into a new house, under the rule of a different man gave me some precious leeway against my fathers old rule. But it was short lived.
I'll come back to that if you'll walk with me down this trail for a moment.
When I arrived at My Grandfathers house it was work work work, though most of the hard moving was complete. I walked downstairs still carrying the heat and tan from California, into the dark dank basement of my Grandfathers house. I was showed to my new room. No more the comfortable second level fortress, familiar place called my room, my safe haven. It was now merely my My bed sitting barren in the middle of a old game room with a bar in the back of it, and only one meager window small.... It remains one of the strangest sights I've been expected to call home. It sicked me inside, and as much as it was exciting as all moves are, it also held that awful sense of it'll never be the same. That was one of the hardest things about living here, was living in the basement....
Now, like I said my Grandfathers sage rule of this house was short lived. We enjoyed his company day and night for only three months as I later found out at 11:45pm on September 25 2009, when my Grandfather passed away in Illinois on a family trip back to his home. The blessing in this was, that he saw his home, his familiar sights, his house where he was a little boy, one more time before he passed, and was buried near his first wife, from whom he'd been separated for so long.
After this, his chair in front of the TV, became my fathers TV chair... The places he'd been, became the territory of my father, some how desecrated by the image of that now bitter rival. I began to hear the same man who lived in the last house, now without my Grandfathers ears to hold back his tongue. The head of the table, the upper most corner in this house, the dear chair in front of the television, the lands once held by that kind and quiet man. Now lay conquered by my Father. Boisterous, commanding, and irritating, I felt it closing in, the stress, the constant observation, the lack of space!
The only place I still have peace is the roof top hiding place outside the bathroom window. It still holds some sense of originality blended with small memories of sneaking out there as a boy. It holds flavors of the first kingdom reigned by my Grandfather, and is the image you see at the top of this page.
I've felt it every day sense I first arrived from LA. I am only visiting my Grandfathers house says the voice in the back of my head. After visiting this place for 17 years. It's hard to see it as anything else, by way of memory there is no room left to make a new home for myself here. It remains, my Grandfathers house. Eight months, Now dead.. And I have to live in it, alien, unfamiliar still.....
James 1.2-8.
2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
It's another interesting view though, since this was my Mothers familiar place, her safe haven when she was little, so to her she is home again....
Places, faces, and stuff. That shouldn't be what makes my sense of security. It should be who I know I am, who I know my God is, and where I know I will find my friends.
Everything changed after I finally took and stand and stepped out in faith going to LA at the beginning of 2009, I need to take another step. Amazing things happen when you do.
I shall have to find myself, and my confidence, to make a new place of peace in my own home. That's the only way I'll find peace now is moving out into my own place.... Thank You Lord for how at least this leaves me no path but to grow...
As MercyMe would say "Ohh Ohh you know it's gonna be alright"
Evan Curtiss.
