♪ Something Good ♪

I slept on the couch last night. No, I was not mad at Jonathan… and if I was, sleeping on the couch would have no effect on a partner working overseas. HA!

My bed moved ahead of me to the new house, but in true pioneer-woman form, I stayed behind to defend the homestead against teenage druggie neighbors and the prying eyes of my soon-to-be-former landlord. We have yet to move the electronics and big furniture items, so Shiloh and I stayed here at the Cottage while the menfolk bunked down at Seymour Road.

I stood at the windows of the new living room yesterday while Jon and I talked and prayed about Life in Kuwait. Working overseas can be like living a daily travel nightmare at times, and yesterday was one of those days. He doesn’t show a lot of emotion, like most men, especially in regards to their job, but I can hear tension under the surface. I viewed the neighbor’s estate as we talked, and tried to kythe  (as Madeleine L’Engle would say, or telecommunicate) the peace in my line of vision while we talked about corporate lunacy.

Across the street from us is an estate.

A Tyrolean style home, complete with scalloped wooden gates, and a spreading lawn with hedge rows and huge graceful trees. I’ve long admired this home and the surrounding grounds in the ten years that I have driven past it, and now it is my daily view.

Stark contrast to the little country neighborhood that God blessed us with in the aftermath of The Hurricane which constituted the person I married after the boys’ dad and I split up. (We refer to him as The Hurricane because he always stirred up trouble and left a wake of debris, and, in reference to the First Failed Marriage, as my mom likes to tell folks back home at the grocery, HA, gambling issues and physical abuse do not a marriage make…). ANYWAY, six years ago The Hurricane and I had settled with the teenage boys into a gorgeous brick home west of here where I could walk with my best friend and walk to work and have friends over, but when he blew out of town, with my furniture and most of my dignity, we had to quickly find new digs, and we were blessed with the Cottage on New Years’ Day, ’07.That morning during the Rose Parade telecast, I prayed for a 4-BR house with a fireplace so the boys could keep their own rooms and a semblance of the life I’d envisioned in the house.

THAT very afternoon my prayer was answered.

I had to sacrifice what was left of my twice-divorced dignity to live in the Cottage. A WWII bungalow with little charm, it took lots of elbow grease and ingenuity to make it cozy on the inside. Living near a country highway and a small airport does NOT allow for cozy spaces outside. At all. HA Also, out the front door of the Cottage I usually see several low-life young people smoking in the garage of their grandparents’ home, where they live with an assortment of seriously annoying dogs and two small disheveled children. We usually kept the door shut, and made a life for ourselves inside or away from the house. 

As I stood at the window yesterday, looking at the graceful lines of the chalet-type home in my new neighborhood, listening to Jonathan’s deep tones coming from across the world, I felt a little like Maria von Trapp in the gazebo with the Captain, reveling in each other. Only slightly different that Maria, my awestruck-self marveled at the grace of God giving me Jonathan and a new home with him. 

Echoes of, “Perhaps I had a wicked childhood, I know I had a miserable youth, but somewhere in my  wicked, miserable past, I must have had a moment of truth. For here You are, standing there loving me, whether or not You should, for somewhere in my youth, or childhood, I must have done something good. Something good… nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever should, so somewhere in my youth, or childhood, I must have done something good.”

Thank You Jesus, for carrying me from the Hurricane, through cancer, and to the view of the chalet. I must have done something good…