Dreaming: Our 8th House-iversary
Today, we celebrate eight years living in this quirky old turn-of-the-century house on what I am still convinced is the best block on Cucharras St.
We’re at that age where lots of friends are moving out of their first homes and into their dream houses and “forever homes” with custom-built kitchens. And if there’s one thing I love, it’s a beautiful kitchen.
I’m not sure I’d call our home my dream house, exactly (I mean, the pipes to the washing machine freeze if we have more than one day in a row of frigid weather—no matter how high the dirty laundry is piled, I’m pretty sure there’s a snake living in my garage wall, and due to the layout of the bedrooms we share a room with our two-year-old), but I have learned to have the courage to dream while at the same time fostering a deep sense of contentment in our years living in this house, and that’s no small thing.
This past year in our house has included a lot of dreams fulfilled for us. After the renovations to our main living area last year, we were finally able to gather a house-full of friends around a table that stretched the length of the room for an All Saints’ Day celebration where we feasted and laughed and sang and read Scripture and shared stories of people who have shown us what Jesus’s love is like. After years of forming relationships with people on our street and dreaming about what a faithful kingdom presence here could look like, this Spring we sat in a pew with neighbors who hadn’t set foot in a church in a long time. We added another beautiful piece of original artwork to our walls that is a daily reminder of the good and gracious Story that God has grafted our home into. We’ve lingered long in our backyard with family and friends eating homemade carnitas or bourbon peach cobbler or delivery pizza and frozen chicken nuggets from a bag while the kids played, a dream that seemed a long way off when our dog spent our first month in the house digging up broken dishes and tarnished silverware that one of our house’s more eccentric former owners had buried in the weed-infested backyard.
At its core, I think the idea of the “dream house” in our cultural vocabulary is about the opportunity to embody a particular definition of “the good life,” allowing us to cultivate what we value most, whether that is hospitality, simplicity, proximity to creation, lots of spaces for quiet and rest, beauty, or any other of the hundreds of possibilities. Somehow, our first house just keeps right on growing with us as our vision of goodness and life and the things we value, by the abundance of God’s grace, are shaped more and more by his coming kingdom among us.
Sometimes on a quiet night, we can hear the bells of St. Mary’s Cathedral as we sit on the porch in the dimming light. A few evenings ago, as the bells in the distance sounded and our children (at last, bless them) hushed, the bigness and brightness of the Super Blue Moon drew Matt and me down to the end of the block to get a full view without overarching tree branches obscuring it. It was unbelievably beautiful.
On our walk back, I snapped this picture of our house, the lights glowing warmth and welcome. I’m reminded of the words of Ps. 36 we echo back to God in the Evening Prayer:
“How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.”
The light of the presence of Christ continues to illuminate our days in this home. May our ninth year here be one of dreaming new dreams of how we can turn our faces more fully toward the Source of light and reflect it more faithfully.