I have begun tentatively looking for a new home. Ideally, this would have been a change I made back at the end of my divorce. But…I had cancer and I felt like a move just might have killed me.
So, I made difficult financial choices to stay in the house where I reared my five children. It was an expensive mercy, but one we all needed. I don’t regret that decision, but lately I have begun thinking that mercy for myself might look like moving on.
Yesterday, I went to see a gorgeous home in a small town about an hour and a half northwest of where I live now. It was built in 1911 and once was the home of a senator, so I hear. It received an update in the early 70’s or late 60’s and has remained untouched since. It was like stepping back in time. There was a lot to love, but to say it needed work would be an understatement.
My friend who went with me to tour it, bounced up and down a bit in the dinning room before solemnly pronouncing judgement- “This floor doesn’t feel right.”
Yikes.
We wandered room to room as I dreamed of what could be. I lovingly ran my hand over the breathtaking banister of the main stairwell and the original tiles gracing one of many fireplaces. We climbed all the way up to the unfinished third floor where a cold January wind whistled through the broken front window. My friend pointed to a dark corner of the space and asked the realtor, “What is that!?!”
It was something dead. Rat? Bird? I didn’t look, and no one else wanted to get too close to figure it out.
Back downstairs, we thanked the realtor and exchanged contact info before race-walking to the warmth of the car. It wasn’t until I sat down in the driver’s seat that I knew the truth-
I am way too tired to buy that house.
Isn’t it strange how we are sometimes unaware of our weaknesses and limitations until life throws up a set of circumstances we can’t manage? I spent a lifetime refusing to accept my limitations. (It is what the women in my family do, darn it!) I truly believed that if I drove myself to the brink mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, that I could do ANYTHING.
Oh, how I had to suffer to find out that I indeed have limitations.
Cancer on the heels of divorce gave me many gifts, but the realization that I too need mercy is one of the sweetest. I am learning to offer myself kindness, compassion, and rest. Over and over I hear the tender voice of God whisper in the depths of my soul, “You are a child, not a slave. Mercy and rest, daughter. Mercy and rest…”
I’m not very good at it, but by the grace of God I am trying to do better. Perhaps walking away from my 1911 HGTV nightmare is step in the right direction.