“What’s that over there?” Lori asked.
We were rummaging through all the stuff you have to rummage through for a garage sale. In a corner, sagging under the weight of outdated CDs and old magazines, a box was hiding.
“House plans,” I answered when Lori asked what was in it.
“House plans? From where?”
She had forgotten how difficult a time I had finding the right house for our then-to-be blended family over twenty years ago.
I had dreamed of the ideal house for this family. But nothing on the market seemed to work for us: four kids between the ages of 12 and 16 and two schnauzers.
Finally, I gave up looking and decided to build. I found an ideal piece of property. After finding a builder, I had the house plans drawn up and was ready to go to the bank for the loan.
“This would have been an amazing house,” Lori said, looking over the plans spread out on the garage floor. “A two-level house with a huge front porch and 12 windows,” she said of the house I never built.
“A three-car garage,” our daughter, Madi, exclaimed. “You had big plans.”
We oohed and aahed over the spacious kitchen, eating area, entertainment room, porch with an additional patio, ample laundry room, and three and a half bathrooms.
“I don’t see how a preacher and school teacher could have afforded this,” Madi said.
“I’d still be paying for it,” I chuckled.
Maybe the bank wouldn’t have loaned me the money, but it doesn’t matter because another house became available that was just what we needed. It wasn’t as impressive as the house I never built, but with some adjustments, the one I chose worked just fine. Best of all, it was available.
As I walked upstairs later that night, with those old house plans in hand, I thought of Psalm 127:1: “If the Lord does not build the house in vain do the builders labor.”
For a moment, I thought I heard the kids bouncing in at different times after a Friday night football game, tiptoeing upstairs when they were late.
Glancing around the open room upstairs, I smiled, for that’s where our four kids would sit in front of the TV. Strange how I thought I could hear David, Jr. tromping down the stairs on Saturday morning to join Lori and me for College Game Day. And there was Mary in her pink robe, nestled on the couch, with a mug of my strong coffee in hand. I had an image of Madi, our future nurse, dressing one of Dave’s football wounds — Madi, with her spacious smile and wide-open arms, embracing her new family. And Harrison always had plans for additions to the house. “You know what would be cool?” he would start as he shared his plan. In that memory, a pain pricked my heart as I looked down the hall and felt Harrison’s absence.
Downstairs, at the dining table, was the place where we shared stories, and our family blended, though we teased Lori for insisting that we eat regularly together as a family. The six of us would join hands at the table and give thanks to God.
And then, as quickly as they polished off a Sunday dinner, they were all gone, having flown the coop one by one.
Only to return, time and again, with friends, then spouses, and then grandchildren. And now, Lori and I get to live it over again, in the same but different ways, in our house, complete with little children’s finger smudges on the windowpanes, food crumbs on the floor, and giggles echoing through every room. And while they bring their dogs with them, our schnauzers are now down to one: Ol’ Max, who mainly sleeps.
Clutching those old house plans, I gently placed them in the corner of my study, content in our house, the house God built.