The Playhouse


  It's been an on-going saga  in my life this year - what to keep and what to discard. The irony in those decisions has been the value placed on the items.  It's been easier to part with a large piece of furniture or family antique than it has an old letter or kindergarten art work.
  That "box" that most mothers stash in the cabinet or under the bed was full of finger paint drawings, get-well cards from Tahya and Eli, and lots of Mother's Day cards.  Call me a nostalgia geek, but even I know I kept way too much "stuff."
  Even as I tried to discard I spent too much time re-reading them or strolling down memory lane.  I would wrestle with what to do, but the question that always turned me toward the garbage can was this:  Who will want to keep these when I'm gone?
  I knew the answer.  No one!  Eli's drawing of our family with its peanut-shaped images on an 11x14 piece of yellowed paper wouldn't bring any real sentiment to his own little ones.  I was only saving things for my children to discard.
  However, I dug my heels in on a few items.  One was Mother's address book.  It's a spiral-bound hardback with almost every page covered in names and addresses.  One can follow friends and family members' moves by the list of changes.  Phone numbers are jotted on the backs of pages and some old friends are (sadly) crossed through.
  Last week I was needing a relative's address and instead of googling it I turned to Mother's address book.  It caused me to drop on the edge of the bed and read through the names.  I lingered - and lingered.  It was her handwriting, and I treasured every curve and uniform letter.  I remembered her ministry of letter-writing and newspaper-clipping ministry and how many times she had used this catalogue of names.  She never painted canvasses like her own mother, but she had mailed  so many one-of-a-kind treasures in an envelope.
  Someday Mother's address book will be tossed to the garbage, but it will be someone else to do it.  For me, it's one small way I can still "touch" what she touched.
  Sometimes I open God's Word, and I experience a similar happening.  The words I read are God-breathed and God-inspired.  No, they're not the original tablets that Moses held or the scrolls like Isaiah carried, but God's Spirit is there.  It's a visit with Him each time I read from the Bible's pages.  How we should treasure every word and each visit.



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The Playhouse

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: Camille Anding <camilleanding@gmail.com>
Date: September 30, 2013 at 9:41:11 PM CDT
Subject: The Playhouse

                        The Playhouse


  How do you dismantle a house?  Since I was a novice I could only watch the professionals, and I wasn't overly excited about that. Room by room they removed the remnants of remaining furniture that had served us well in making a home.
  A close inspection of the dining room rug would have revealed a few grease spots from random biscuit crumbs or sticky spots from a drippy Mrs. Butterworth's. Some tears may have dissolved part of the stains, but they would have been tears of laughter around a table adorned with family and friends.
  The dining table moved with ease out the back door,but if all the food served from it had weighed it down, moving would have been impossible.  My heart pushed back the memories to thank God again that we had eaten bountifully from that table and never pulled away from it with hungry stomachs.
  I made an audible sigh when I untied the small brown basket from the upstairs rail.  Camea had tied it in place when she was a child and for years every grandchild had played with it, lowering and hoisting messages and toys to each other.  Their guardian angels had earned extra merits for never allowing any of the small children to tumble between or over the rails.
  The chinning bar that Eli requested in Junior High looked totally isolated in the doorway of his empty room.  He had worked hard at muscle building, and every grandchild had followed suit in swinging from its perch.  I knew it didn't add value to the bedroom, but I refused to remove it.  It had earned its spot.
  Saying goodbye to our stone fireplace wasn't easy either.  I knew that was the last of firewood-cutting days and stacking the rows of wood in the backyard.  I had never complained about bringing in firewood because the warm crackle of a winter fire insulated us from every frosty night on our Etta hill.
  The hallway seemed most empty without its display of family pictures. There were school day images with snaggle  teeth and crooked bangs, Acteen events, senior pictures of Tahya and Eli, their wedding favorites, and then varieties of the grands.  It was our own art gallery displaying images of our treasures.  I was amazed at how lonely the walls looked.
  As I reminisced over the blessed, full years in our home, I wondered if houses ever received awards.  Surely this one had earned one.  It had weathered hurricane force winds, storms that bent trees over the driveway but never over the roof, poundings of hail and lashes from driving flash floods.
  There had been some internal storms brought on by sickness, heartache - even death, but its walls had stood strong and its foundation unmoved.  Would a realtor add value to a home whose walls were layered in prayer and ceilings with praise?  Probably not, but we knew the value of a home that God built.
  Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, said, "Unless the LORD builds the house, those who built it labor in vain."  Our Etta home stands as testimony to that truth. Its "For Sale" sign should include: God-built.


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