The Crayon
I did not know if she would answer the door. The dogs on the other side did. Loudly, persistently. Five years ago she had tried to sell but never did. After checking the front entrance, I got ready to leave my note in her mailbox when she opened the door, revealing two leaping Corgis. The note shared our vision for a house with a barn and a pool where we could welcome people to encounter the grace of God in their pain through creativity. The note asked her if she would consider selling to us. The note mentioned that my sister-in-law now owned the house five doors down. The family from her house and this house used to be friends. In the note, I promised to honor her family’s memories and enjoy a relationship once again between the houses. Forget the note - she invited me in.
We sat in her family room as Lillian entertained my request to buy her house. She was the same age as my mother and parents-in-law. I knew my request could set in motion a monumental task and loss for her. She had lived there 45 years, she told me. She and her husband raised their children there. Yet now the responsibility of caring for the house was a burden. She was ready for a condo with less land, less stairs, less pool. She saw the gift in selling her house without putting it on the market. As she shared some of her stories with me, I saw my own mother, now a widow too, facing similar decisions in her future. Lillian agreed to the next step. We faltered our way through four months of the selling and buying process. The job was too big, the challenges kept coming, yet a divine hand kept moving her and us toward one another until I found myself at her doorstep once again.
“Here are all the keys to the house,” she motioned as she opened a kitchen drawer. Lillian took me around to show me thoughtful things she left with our girls in mind: a painting, a dollhouse, whimsical headboards. The house seemed smaller now that it was empty. It seemed like her identity here was shrinking so she could put it in her purse and carry it with her. I was sad too. And honored. We were a part of the passage from her warm, familiar past to her unknown, different future. The empty house was good and needed for both of us. My empty future met her emptied past. We were both at the threshold - losing everything we knew to follow the new that beckoned us. The new was alive with promise. Yet the joy ahead pulsed with the emptiness at present.
“Do you want some time to say goodbye?” I asked.
“I’ve already done that,” she assured me. She had a pile of items by the side door that she would return for later. She gathered a pair of curtains into her arms and started out the door. Sean and I followed her and stood on the stoop. She turned back to us on the path to her car.
“Love it,” she pronounced. “If you like stargazing this is the place to do it.”
Then she tossed her dry cleaning into the backseat, and drove away. 45 years of family history trailed behind her.
Is every gift wrapped in loss? The best gifts I received have meant a loss of the old way. Promising I do to the love of my life meant the loss of how “I took care of me” before him. Holding our daughter as a newborn, smelling her soft head under my chin, came wrapped in the loss of how “I lived me” before her. Taking on this new job meant losing the routine and structure to which I became accustomed. These are all the best of gifts, given by the generous Gift-Giver. In his hands, these gifts have made me “more me” than ever. Yet there is always a death to the old. I have not always attended to it. It has compounded loss. This year, God has been at work in this area. This year of loss has also been a year of redemption for me. I could see the evidence of this grace in the four months of faltering steps with Lillian. They made me sit in the “emptying” of my life without “the new” to fill it. (Also, without my familiar old patterns to “turn off” in it.) The Lord held us in it--held us back, held us from, held us close. It gave me such hope for those who need comfort. I grew in compassion for others in Lillian’s shoes, especially those closest to me; I wanted to honor her because of them.
Really, anyone in any life stage is facing the emptying of oneself. The emptying of one’s life, especially in later years, is a sacred and impossible task. I think of loss as making one more alone. Yet, in the Lord, loss takes us more into him. And then into new families. God emptied himself in order to meet us in our emptiness. Jesus “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). Jesus emptied himself so we would be at peace with God. He leads us through grief so the new life can grow.
As I cleaned the house in our first days of owning it, I found a crayon in the crack between the floorboards of my daughter’s closet. Our crayons were still packed in boxes. It must have belonged to one of Lillian’s children. I smiled as I thought of the children who played in this room, who grew up in this house. I am so glad this house has been lived in. That is its purpose. I honor their memories, their struggles, their losses. Now we are filling it. We already have memories of a redeeming God filling our losses with his grace and new life. The cracks will tell the story.
In thanks to Lillian and her family.
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