Friday, March 23, 2012

Goodbye 3703!

The deed is done (ha ha) and 3703 is now the home of our good friends, the Davies.

It has been about a two year process from The Lawyer's interview in Richmond to our closing this week. Some days I can hardly remember what our days were like during those long months that we were separated from The Lawyer. Many days I'm just washed with a deep sense of gratitude for where we are, together. It is still so good to be together.

3703 was our home while The Lawyer learned all his law stuff. We moved in with 3 kids and left with 5. One was born in the upstairs bathroom. One came to 3703 as a newborn when the house was being reconstructed after our "flood."

We loved that old house. We ripped up carpet and exposed hard wood floors. We used crowbars and hammers to take out the old kitchen cabinets and pry up layers of linoleum. We redid the kitchen- twice. We painted everything (except the basement; that project never was finished). The Lawyer put in new bathroom fixtures and we updated the upstairs bath. I rocked babies to sleep and read thousands of books in that house. R had stitches from a swing incident in the back yard. He also had a cast from an incident down the street. The littles had e-coli the first summer we lived there.

We had our car broken into. We planted gardens. We picked cherries and mulberries and endlessly trimmed bushes. We visited our neighbors and opened our home to friends. I fell down the stairs once. The boys would crash up and down the stairs. We gathered around the piano at meal time and sang songs. Birthdays were celebrated, Christmases and Easters passed happily. We watched the tulips and dogwood and crepe myrtle and peonies and azaleas through the seasons.

In 3703 my husband became a lawyer. I became a full-time educator and a part-time business owner. We lived and breathed and played hard and cried and did all of our life in that house for five years. It's the longest we've ever lived anywhere.

We are so happy to know our friends are doing their life in that space that was sacred to us. Their boys are using the play set and laughing in the yard and snuggling in their own beds. It's amazing to us how the Lord worked out the details so that the Davies could rent from us and then purchase 3703. We didn't pay realtor fees. We feel we all got a good deal and we are still great friends.

3703 is part of our story, a chapter that has passed. We are now more movable and sometimes speculate where we will be next. Somewhere in Richmond? Elsewhere? It is good to know that our God goes before us and prepares the way, then holds us in where we need to be. Here is good now.

1 comment:

David Simms said...

Hallelujah! We miss you all so!!