I wrote yesterday about my sister moving this weekend. As you may know, she’s one of heroes for many reasons, not the least of which is that she’s a great storyteller. She wrote me an essay about her thoughts of moving away from a house that raised up her children. She’s agreed to let me share it here with you this morning. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome to the Ramada Inn stage, Lynn Miles Peisker:
Call me crazy but I like moving. It’s all fresh and clean and orderly.
My family is moving (by choice) from the home we’ve shared for 12 years. It’s a nice house, very traditional though and we’re ready for something different, more “open concept” and truth be told, without the yardwork.
To prepare, we’ve gone through all our worldly possessions. We’ve made trips with donations to Goodwill and ReStore. We’ve wrapped and packed and stacked. My husband is a gifted spacialist and so he has organized our storage unit (made necessary by a two-step move…oh, economy how you play with us) into a thing of beauty, like one of those perfect three dimensional puzzles.
What remains to pack are the things we really need for six months of apartment living. Our beds. Ten plates. Two guitars. The waffle iron. Okay maybe we didn’t really need that last one.
In this house, we shared pivotal moments that made us who we are as a family in this house. I remember where I was sitting (the couch in our bedroom under the west window) when we decided to do what it took to send our daughter to Harvard. This house was where our oldest son who announced his plans for a gap year in Germany; we packed his suitcases in the dining room. This is where our second son opened his first guitar, a birthday gift, at age 10 and spent the next 7 years practicing in our sunroom, becoming the amazing musician he is today.
And this is where we welcomed the newest member of our family, our delightful son-in-law and his equally delightful Glaswegian family.
But the house and the stuff; they are not who we are.
This week, the school district for which I work, suddenly lost one of its beloved school board members. His legacy doesn’t have anything to do with where he lived or what he owned. Story after story is about his passion and compassion for those with whom he worked, lived and played.
Our legacy as a family will have nothing to do with this house. It will have nothing to do with our stuff, not even our waffle iron.
I hope it will be how we launched our kids fearlessly and how we welcomed friends and family warmly and how all along the way we trusted God.
And I’m praying that all those things will still be true in our new open concept, yardwork free home.
This week’s Back Nine: Suggested Weekly Reading
Arian Foster remembers his mom’s sacrifice | ProFootballTalk – Watch Now.
How to Determine If a Charity Like Kony 2012 Is Worth Your Money
The economics of loyalty rewards [infographic]
On The Road: How To Produce Great Work While Traveling The World
The Brain: The Troublesome Bloom of Autism | Mental Health | DISCOVER Magazine
Susan Cain: The power of introverts | Video on TED.com
The New Orleans Saints, the NFL, and concussions – Grantland
Raising money. | Stuff Christians Like – Jon Acuff
Beautiful!