"Bless This House"

Grandma's needlepoint sampler comes alive on the wall of our lives.

Scott found this house on the internet as he surfed for local housing options, looking for something that stewards our money better than our current residence does. We pay a lot right now for nothing more than the suburb name on our address. Don't get me wrong, it was right for us to be here these last two years for they were a time of discovery for us both, a time when living in this town--a place originally named Bethlehem but now named Carmel--was absolutely fitting. (I was reminded of this interesting feature of our town while looking at a little bronze historic marker just today.) Both these names have profound Biblical history. And now both have profound personal history for us as well. But we sense change looming. Maybe this is the time to branch out.

This whisper, the beckoning toward change continues to lead Scott, ultimately peaking his interest in this house that had a "lease with option to buy" arrangement. One windy, rainy night we made an appointment to see it. That afternoon, before the stronger weather rolled in, we went to poke around outside the place. It has a fenced backyard with a wooden swingset and a dog house. The kids would take it based on these things alone, sight unseen inside. There in the warm afternoon sunshine, we talked to a next door neighbor, a very friendly accommodating kind of guy who paused in his lawnmowing to tell us everything from the history of the subdivision to the history of tenants of this particular house.

When we went back that night though, to talk to the owners, an extra layer of "rightness" about this place began to appear for me in concert with Scott's feeling; and it has only been getting stronger and more mysterious ever since. In my metaphoric way of seeing life, I noticed right away, as we stood in the bright kitchen chatting while the dark winds howled outside, that the wife of the owner had my God-sign embroidered on her shirt: a bright red cardinal. The couple's strange tenacity about the "warm fuzzies" they got about us and their disposition to go that extra mile to help us actually buy this house were also unusual.

A point to note is that our past experience with home ownership is bleak, enough so that we were perfectly content with not owning again for years, maybe not until the day came that we needed something in the nature of a condo in some warm-weather retirement village. In fact, before Scott was downsized from his former job, the one involving constant travel, we seriously considered adopting the lifestyle of nomads: full-time in an RV, homeschooling the kids. We hadn't seen the Robin Williams movie yet, but we were almost ready to pack up and live it. Now here we are a couple of months later finding a house that almost feels like it is falling in our laps. It still may not come to us, but things keep pointing our eyes toward it.

For instance, when we drove by it a second time as we were considering it, I noticed the wind chime hanging on the front porch because a breeze made its red cardinals dance and spin and glow in the sun. So not only these non-resident owners put cardinals before my eyes, but also the last tenants marked the house with that bird that has been the one God has used to woo me and to speak to me for years now. (See the blog last winter about this very bird and how it became "my" bird.)

Then last night I had a dream of a house. It was one of those hyper-reality dreams because while the house was normal in its shape and in its classic brick build; it was nevertheless unusual in that it was huge...the size of a sky scraper, with storey upon storey of windows climbing up it. Another distinctive feature was an equally over-sized gabled area in front of the house. I looked up that word, gable, just to make sure it was the one I wanted to use for this fixture on the house and here is what I find about the word: it is Middle English in origin, probably from Anglo-French. It is akin to an Old Irish word meaning forked stick. The etymology is interesting, also the forked stick idea. My husband is Irish. I am English. (My maiden name, Reeves, comes form the Old English term shire reeve, from which our word sheriff comes.) So the word was right, and this gabled area was huge. Its sloping triangular roof extended a good 7 storeys. In a word, the house was breathtaking, not so much because it was beautiful. It was actually rather average. It was breathtaking because it was large enough to be imposing, even as it was unimposing in design. A symbol conveying a strange blend of profound power in the confines of humble presentation.

I woke from this dream, and being on my first day of fall break, I went downstairs to get a more leisurely than usual cup of coffee. There on the kitchen table was a picture drawn by one of my children. It was a large house--three-storeys--and two-toned in color. One side was red, the other blue. The windows on each storey were alternately red and blue.

The first thing to hit me was that the actual house Scott found us (the one that seems to want us more than we want it) is blue with red shutters. The second thought was the synchronous, random redundancy of my dream with my son's picture. I sat down to do my Bible study and looked up the verse that first popped into my mind as I saw the two-toned feature of his picture layered with my dream...it is a verse about two sticks becoming one in the hand of God. Ezekiel wrote about it. For some reason, the two colors made me think about that mysterious prophetic image. Then when I talked to the boys over breakfast, I learned what tool my son, Nolan, used to create the picture: a single wooden colored pencil, one that is one color on one end and another color on the other end. What would normally be drawn with two wooden colored pencils was instead drawn with two in one. The two sticks being one from the scripture again found that center of divine redundancy. And of course, the gable meaning forked stick, or two sticks coming together to a place of joining from the language my husband's ancestors spoke, tied to the image from my dream. The red and blue of the actual house and of Nolan's drawing. All these common threads are weaving. And larger still, I call look at the fact that my husband worked a job that had him away for a little over three years, the number of days Christ walked his ministry in human body. I think how Christ himself went away "to prepare a place for us," and now my husband, as he walks this image thread given uniquely to him, sensed it was time, and indeed it was time, to come home to stay, and now a place of permanence, something we had nearly given up on as we made ready to wander life's wilderness indefinately, permanence is presenting itself to us without our putting much effort to having it. We only need to say we'll receive it.

Even riding along this morning, we saw the marquee in from of a church that read, "God will supply if you will apply." Well, we sent in the application this morning. So much of that larger reality I blogged about the other day invading the actuality of the sensory world these last few days! So much evidence that the random workings and intimate details of family and close circumstances and the vulnerability of sleep, crescendo together.

And larger than our own little story is the reason for the two sticks becoming one in that verse. It is one of several predictions that have had God's holy highlighter on them for me of late: the bringing together of divided families in the house of Israel, namely the house of Judah, which is to me Christianity, and the house of Joseph, which I think stands as a remnant of holy Judaism. Whether I read that last part right or not, we are nevertheless walking a microcosm of this prophecy of the two sticks it seems, so here is that text specifically:

Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and [for] all the house of Israel his companions:
And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.
And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou [meanest] by these?
Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which [is] in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, [even] with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.
And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes.
And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land:
And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all:
Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwelling places, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God.
And David my servant [shall be] king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them.
And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, [even] they, and their children, and their children's children for ever: and my servant David [shall be] their prince for ever.
Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.
My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.
Ezekiel 37:16-28

What is there to say, God, but make it so.