It is usually a bitter-sweet time to put your house on the market. With new possibilities and memories on the horizon, you are sad about leaving the place you’ve called home, and made so many memories in. It’s even more so when that home you are putting up for sale is the one you shared with a late spouse.
This is what I am encountering currently. I have recently moved into a brand new home that my girls and I built. It is our “next chapter” of the story God is writing through our sorrow. While we are excited and hopeful about what the future in this house brings, we are sad about leaving our old house behind.
Even though there is part of me that is excited and knows the move was good for our healing, there is so much of me that feels like by moving, we are leaving all the thoughts of my late husband and the life we built behind. That we are abandoning him.
That house is the last to know his footsteps, feel his breath, and hear his voice. Those are the halls that are the last to have memory of him, where his hopes and dreams were made known, and his ideas and visions came to fruition.
It’s hard…..it’s hard walking those halls and turning a corner, knowing what it was like when he was turning that same corner in the opposite direction, and knowing that will never happen again….ever. It’s hard to know the sound of his laughter echoing through the house, or the sound of his voice while he was recording a video in the office, lulling you to sleep, and know that sound will never fill a house again. It’s hard….
But it’s also hard because that house, is the house where he lived his last day. Where the events unfolded that ultimately took his life. It’s hard to walk through the areas that impacted that day so greatly and not see that version of him. I want to remember a better version of him.
While it is hard to let go of the house that we built our life in, I am reminded that that is all it is…..a house. The memories are in my head, and in my heart. We are lucky enough to have video of him to hear his voice, and pictures so we can sit and soak in what he looked like. Home is where we are, and our love is.
It is all temporary anyway. Our Heavenly home awaits us….he was just lucky enough to get there first.
“For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come. ” Hebrews 13:14 NLT
Perspective for the Moment 