By wisdom a house is built,
Proverbs 24:3-4
and through understanding it is established;
through knowledge its rooms are filled
with rare and beautiful treasures.
This week – because we had to get up ridiculously early for Rebekah’s cataract surgery in Raleigh and then needed to go all the way to Holly Springs for her follow-up appointment the next day – we will have spent three nights here at our Wake Forest home.
The house is a disorganized mess because we’re not really living here, the kitchen doesn’t have what I need to prepare a good meal, and the garden is littered with branches and leaves and projects that need to be done. Yet…
And yet… this is home, and I am reminded of a passage from a favorite children’s book (Kenneth Grahame’s remarkable The Wind in the Willows), where Mole returns to his house after giving it so little thought while he was away: “… with a rush of old memories, how clearly it stood before him now… his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to… And the home had been happy with him too. evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was telling him so… The call was clear, the summons was plain…”
It’s okay. I am not going to cry like the unfortunate Mole. But – along with Max who has excitedly retraced his favorite walks and best smells both morning and evening – I realize how much this place means to me, and what a lovely neighborhood this is. And I guess we must have come to love this house a lot over ten years because I really do miss it.
But we are ready, this morning, to head back to Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church and resume our year of adventures with the beautiful people who invited us to journey with them for a season.
Because if “home is where the heart is,” then so long as Rebekah and I are together and doing the work we have been called to do, then we can hang a grateful Dulce Domum on our Tarboro door too.
Peace and more peace, always – DEREK