We sold our house on the end of Uranus St. And there was much re-grieving. Because the places we possess also possess us.
Hey. It’s been a while.
(If you know, you know. If you don’t, then let me introduce you to my freshmen year of high school.)
I contribute most of the gap since my last post to a wild and busy June. You know about our almost-fostering adventure with our girls’ half-brother. We also sold our old house.
Yes, the Uranus St. house. The one with the playhouse in the backyard that my granddad helped refurbish. The one with the platform swing hanging from the ponderosa pine.
This spring, Lindsey and I spent a considerable amount of time considering the demands and opportunities of life. We realized that we needed less on our plates. We needed to free up some existential open space. Space, that elusive territory which “represents sanity,” per Gretel Ehrlich in The Solace of Open Spaces, her memoir about life in Wyoming.
We saw our old house, which we flipped into a rental property, as a space-occupying domino that if tipped over could knock over a few others. We closed June 30, and the new buyers moved in about a week later. And somehow it’s already the end of July.
(I could share more about this, but we’re thrilled with who God brought our way to buy the house. It’s a young family and first-time homebuyers. Just like we were when we bought it.)
Our tenant moved out in late May, so we had the house “to ourselves” one last time. This was a gift. One night, about a week before close, all five of us were there. I was outside pulling weeds when I saw the party lights come on over the patio, and there I found my wife and kids with eyes full of tears. They had been going through the house, room by room, recalling the life that we had lived in that space.
And as much extra time and energy as it ate up in June, I was thankful for the opportunity to tend to the yard and flowers again. We picked strawberries out of the back garden and stood underneath the ponderosa. And I got to mow my beloved buffalo grass again. Owning a place does something to you. As Ehrlich points out, there are ways “in which the place possess me.” After 10 years there and one as a landlord, it will forever own a place in my heart. “Mowing hayfields feels like mowing myself,” writes Ehrlich.
On the last night of our ownership of that piece of Uranus, after checking off the remaining to-dos, I sat on the front step and looked about me. Yes, I certainly did cry. Then I prayed a prayer I had written for my family when we moved out last summer. It’s a liturgy “for moving away from a beloved home.” We prayed it together on our last morning as residents last year, and I needed to pray it again myself on the eve of that final farewell.
I’m sharing it here in the hopes that it helps you say goodbye to those places that have taken out a mortgage on your heart—no matter how long ago you left them. Or perhaps you’re facing a move from a place that owns you as much as you own it—whether in actuality or metaphorically—and you’re fumbling for words. And you’re finding yourself as excited as you are sorrowed.
You’re in good company. Keep mowing those yards, and may these words become your own.
(Bolded type is to be said aloud together, if praying with others.)
(I also removed all the jokes about Uranus being the location of a beloved home. Just kidding. There were never any jokes about Uranus in any version of this prayer. But maybe there should have been.)
Father, you have made us for yourself
and our hearts are homesick
until they make their home in you.
In this home that we are now leaving,
we have experienced a foretaste
of that rest, that peace, that deep belonging,
that beloved grounded-ness which we will
one day know in full in your presence.
That is why we are right to grieve this change.
In between these walls, around this table,
underneath these trees and in this garden,
you have mercifully revealed to us
your deep and abundant goodness.
Pulling up roots hurts, Father.
Moving reminds us that we are yet pilgrims,
sojourners, way-finders in this beautiful but broken world.
Let our tears remind us of our true hope,
our forever home, that even now you are preparing for us.
Though our hearts are caught in the tension
between loss of what we love and excitement for what’s to come,
we are right to give you thanks
for all you have done here [name the address].
Thank you, Lord, for the friendships forged with our neighbors.
Thank you, Lord, for the love given and received
in this galaxy of warm places—
names and addresses of real people made in your image.
Thank you, Lord, for the meals shared. For the eggs borrowed.
For lives lived in close proximity,
in everyday inter-dependence.
Let our hearts find comfort and courage in the outrageous truth
that you, Jesus—creator, savior, King—are no stranger to moving.
In your adjective-defying love, you left your home
to make your home with us—to seek and to save
orphans like us, to settle us in the home of your presence.
We look forward to the day when the dwelling place
of God will be with man for all eternity,
where we will see you face-to-face.
You have new adventures planned for us,
new work for us to do in a new neighborhood with new neighbors.
We know that because you are with us
and because we are with each other,
our new destination
will become as much of a home as the one we’re leaving now.
We thank you for making all things new,
and because your promises are sure,
we know that you will go before us into this new
stretch of our pilgrimage, even as our hearts
long to be in our forever home, even as we look forward
to that safe lodging and holy rest that you have promised
to those who love you and seek your kingdom.
Amen.
