Several years ago, when my husband was pastoring in a Very small rural community, we lived in a farmhouse. Sounds perfect doesn't it?
Well, it sorta was.
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| RollingHills Vintage |
We had been renting a home in town, and I use the term loosely...there was a bank, a grain elevator and a hardware store...when someone bought the rental out from under us. We still owned and were trying to sell a home in another part of the state--we couldn't buy a house, couldn't find a house to rent and had a narrow timeframe of less than three weeks to be out of the rental we were in.
Normally in situations less stressful than this one I panic. Full blown get the bag she's hyperventilating, sing Hakuna Matata over and over to her, smack her in the face and call her Shirley panic. This time, not so much. I knew we would find a place.
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| OpenDoorStudio |
So we drove. And drove. And drove around the area. Nothing...
Til we drove out in the country and passed (about a mile and a half from 'town') an old farmhouse that no one was living in. I'd call it abandoned except a family still owned it, they lived two towns away and had rented it out but the renters who had lived there for years finally moved six months prior. It was perfect for us. We contacted the family, rolled up our sleeves and dove in.
When I say perfect it's easy to picture a whitewashed home, with a front porch and gigham curtains, isn't it? This wasn't that farmhouse. This was a paint is badly peeling, someone didn't care for this properly sort of farmhouse. We removed, with the help of some friends, layers of wallpaper...more than a wedding cake--we took up cat urine soaked carpets to reveal the hardwood underneath. Windows were replaced, holes in the basement were patched, floors were joisted up and then....
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| Post Road Vintage |
There I was, sitting in a kitchen with creamy white cabinets, sunlight filtering through old lace curtains given to me from a farmwife down the road...and I realized I was as close to Glory as I ever was on this earth. We had to leave that farmhouse when my husband got a post in a different church over a year later, and I think in a way I always hope underneath everything to recapture that moment in my life.
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| ProsperosBookshelf |
I know it's just a place, but I think some places speak to us--they might be different for each person--but they sing a tune that we know too and make us feel at home somehow.
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| AmyKristineVintage |
Sometimes I catch myself in a melancholy state, and wonder where in the world my mind is, and why I am not 'feeling' like my sunny self. Then I remember, and I think somehow--I am longing for that farmhouse...for the way that morning felt when it came a mile and a half from town, for open windows and quiet thoughts, for entire days spent mowing acres and acres of sweet green grass and clover. No phone ringing one house over, only a few cars passing...alone with my thoughts and a chorus of birds that only sing country songs.
I am longing for a farmhouse.
