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| A Picture Of The Little House On Paine Street Taken From The Scrapbook |
We moved into the little house on Paine Street in May of 2002. Prior to that we had lived at the old farm house north of town for six years after moving to the area from our lifelong homes in the Kansas City suburbs.
There wasn't much to the house really...it was small...livingroom, kitchen, two bedrooms (one of them just big enough to put a full sized bed in), and a bathroom, and it had some problems...BUT...it was much better than what we were living in at the time. The lady who owned it said it was wasn't worth much and she made us a really good deal on it. We moved into it six years to the day of moving to Liberal from Blue Springs.
Here is a portion of a post that I posted on my Proverbs 31 Woman (2) Yahoo Group back in February of 2003...
"I am SO grateful for my new home! It's still a miracle to me! Some mornings I get up and I STILL can't believe it! (We moved in here May 15, 2002.) And the best part of it is...IT'S OURS! God did a real number here! He opened the strangest doors in the weirdest places to put us here and the price and the terms were unbelievable!"
Over the years things happened and, all too often, I forgot the miracle that the Lord had wrought on our behalf. With all of life's twists and turns, other things took precedence and I started taking my little house for granted. I no longer appreciated it as I once had. Money was tight and things fell into disrepair. By the time we moved out in October of 2016, I was glad to be rid of the little house that had once been such a blessing to me.
It's been almost a year since we moved into my dad's house. He passed away in May of 2016 and it was his dying wish that we move in to his house and take care of a few things that were very important to him. I promised him that we would and we did. It was hard though. We spent several months painting and fixing things up...making it "ours"...before I could move into it. Once we did, we left a lot of stuff behind at the house on Paine and figured we'd just do a little at a time until everything at the old house was done. As always, life happened and, for the most part, the little house on Paine Street fell by the wayside.
Over the past few weeks we've managed to move most of the little stuff over, but there was still a lot left to do, including getting the rest of my flowers. Yesterday my friend, Carla, came over and, together, we got that done. As we worked we talked about all the things that had happened at that house. So many wonderful memories! As we talked and different things happened I fluctuated between laughing (at the good memories), crying (I didn't know why), and being angry (that everything was the way it was and that it had been that way for so long). It was crazy!
Last night I sent Carla a message apologizing for being such a basket case. She responded with this...
"It's understandable, that place holds a lot of
memories and it would be hard to let go especially
knowing that it won't be there anymore!"
What??? Then it hit me...I am grieving!
The people that are buying the house are tearing it down...which it needs to be. It is a very, very old house with numerous structural problems that can no longer just be fixed. It's time for the house to go...BUT...there has been so. much. loss. in the past year and a half and this is just one more thing. That explains the putting off, the waiting until later...the foot dragging in soooo many areas.
Yesterday made me realize just how many good things happened at that house...how many happy memories were made there. In the days ahead it is my plan to share some of those memories here with you...more for myself, I think, than anything else...but I hope to make this, and the other posts in this series, a tribute to the little house on Paine Street that God blessed us with so many years ago, and to all the memories of it that I hold dear...at least some of them anyway.
Until next time...
~Rebecca
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Grief is a tricky, tricky thing... I so understand where you are coming from! Glad you have the courage to walk through these things you are feeling, as you say goodbye to "home".
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