Walking by faith and not by sight

A lot of angst has filled my heart these last weeks, maybe months.

We sold the house we live in.  We've lived here for 18 years, and my kids grew up here.  Jonathan, the fourth, was born a month after we moved in, and his graduation party will be the last event we celebrate here before we leave.

We've decorated, remodeled the kitchen, upgraded the bathrooms, installed hardwood floors, finished the basement, built decks, installed a pool.  It is pretty much just how we like it now...

Except, right now it is full of boxes, and I've sold off most the basement furniture.

This is our home, where we live, eat, sleep, shower, laugh, cry, fight, pray, study, play games, read books, exercise, recover from illnesses, watch TV and wash clothes.  It's our dwelling place.

When we sold it, we received a closing date, the date by which the new owners will pay us and move in, the date by which we must be out.  Out of our home.

We started looking for another house, in a new town, 775 miles away.

We had a lot of trouble finding a house.  Online, we saw a few homes that looked nice, but they sold before we could get out to see them.  We made a trip and looked at 18 houses with a realtor one week.  We really liked one, but it also sold before we could make an offer.

We tried making an offer on a house that Shawn hated, a fairly small, conservative ranch with a nicely finished basement.  But they wanted crazy money for it and we couldn't reach a deal.

A second trip out to look at 11 more houses turned up another possibility: a remarkable Victorian that had been moved to a new basement on an acre lot in the country.  When we decided to make an offer on it, we called our realtor... and she told us that the owners had just accepted a different offer that very morning.

Frustrated, we regrouped again and made an offer on a house that was bigger, fancier and more expensive than what we had ever wanted.  It was in good shape, in a good location.  There was another offer out on it, a contingency offer.  The realtors told us, "Don't worry.  The other buyers haven't even put their house on the market yet.  They had a death in the family in another country, and they need to make a big trip.  They really just want a way to get out of their offer.  There's no way they'll get the house."  We negotiated with the seller, and the lawyer sent a registered letter to the other buyers, giving them 48 hours to match our offer or lose the house.  They matched our offer.  We lost the house.  In the meantime, the ranch sold, the one we'd negotiated for earlier.  We were pretty completely out of houses.

Many tears fell, many heartbeats pounded, many nights the weight of darkness pressed my breath away.  I prayed and I prayed and I prayed, and I felt as though God was simply hiding His face from me.  Mornings, I would wake and look at the eyelet curtains over my windows, the new oak floor beneath my bed, my familiar walls and the hallway to my bathroom... and I would cling to my mattress, trying to escape the thoughts, "You have to leave this place.  You have to leave this place."

I thought of Abraham.  "Go to the land I will show you," the Lord told him (Genesis 12:1).  Abraham did not know where he was going, and neither did I.

"Jesus, please intercede for me," I begged, "Because I can't pray anymore.  I don't know what to pray.  I don't have any words left.  Please intercede for me."  Fearful, I cried to the Lord, "Help Thou my unbelief," I pleaded, using the old KJV wording because I was helpless to come up with words of my own.

We were out of houses and we didn't have time to make another trip to look at more.  Finally, Shawn agreed to ask his sister and her husband (who live about 90 minutes from our new town) to meet our realtor and look at three more houses I had dug up online.  They were kind and generous enough to spend a day and a bunch of gas for us, and give us their remarks.  They were unable to get into one of the houses... no key could be found.  That left two, and they said the first one was a clear winner over the third one.

So we negotiated for it.  And got it.  We're waiting to hear about the home inspection now, but this could be the one.

We sang a song in church yesterday, and this phrase keeps coming back to me:  "We walk by faith and not by sight."  We walk by faith and not by sight.  To the place He will show us.  Help Thou my unbelief!

The perils of personality traits

The Myer-Briggs personality type indicator system is easy to understand in some respects, and difficult in others.

For instance, dichotomy #1 is very easy to understand: extroversion (E) vs. introversion (I).  You read that, and you just know what it means.  You can flesh it out and learn more about extroversion and introversion, but at its gut, this is a simple concept.

Likewise, dichotomy #3 is quite simple:  thinking (T) vs. feeling (F).  In other words, do your decisions stem more from facts or feelings?   Logic or emotion?  Sometimes it is difficult to discern in oneself whether one is acting in response to fact or feeling (I have, myself, seen some very scientific men who were oddly emotionally driven and would never have admitted it), but regardless of any difficulty in interpretation, the concept is fairly clear.

Dichotomy #2 is more difficult:  intuitive (N) vs. sensory (S), they say.  This is misleading right from the start.  For one thing, I think the word "intuitive" has connotations of the supernatural, but there is nothing supernatural about it in this context.  It simply means that you know it in your head, you work things out in your head first before you try to apply them (or delegate others to try them).  Sensory means that you discover through rubber-meets-the-road experience before you formulate a hypothesis in your head.  Often, people get confused after they start thinking through these designations, and they think that intuitive people are smart, and sensory people are not so smart.  However, S vs. N (or N vs. S) has nothing to do with intelligence, and people of any intelligence could exhibit either one.  Of course, an unintelligent N person would be very difficult to deal with and nearly impossible to teach, but that is getting off the main subject here.

The main difference between Ns and Ss is this:  An N works from the top down, getting a birds-eye view and then filling in the details afterwards.  I am an N.  This is why I hate GPS systems and love maps.  I need to see the whole route, and possible alternate routes, and then choose the best way.  An S person uses details to construct a whole, starting from the bottom and putting pieces together in a step-by-step process until the desired result is achieved.  S people do not mind a GPS.  They are patient and do not need to have all the answers, as long as they know the next step.  Elizabeth Elliott's advice, "Just do the next thing," is not problematic for an S.  An S may tend to be more trusting that following directions will eventually get him to where he wants to be.

Right now, I am really struggling with being an N, because I need to pack my house.  Being an N, all I can see is the HUGE, DAUNTING task ahead of me:  pack up everything in this house where you have lived for 18 years, and get ready to truck it halfway across the country.  Were I an S, I might be able to break this down into manageable steps, but being an N, I panic, and freeze, and end up writing a blog post instead of cleaning out a closet.

I like well defined tasks.  Cut up the cantaloupe.  I can do that.  Wash the dishes.  I can do that.  Make the bed.  Scrub the shower.  Walk the dog.  Sew the button on DJ's tux.  These things I can do, but it stresses me out to do them, because they are not, or do not seem to be, connected to the huge overpowering shadow of PACK THE HOUSE.  PACK THE HOUSE is not a well defined task.

A man we once knew, who had some significant trials in his life, used to say, "I'm eating my elephant one bite at a time."  I am having trouble finding the first place to stick my fork in.

Dichotomy #4 is similarly difficult:  judging (J) vs. perceiving (P).  This one stymies me, and I think, really, that they have used poor terminology to try to describe it.  At the end of the day, I think it comes down to whether you can make a decision or not.  A J person can make a decision, and be happy with it, and always feels best when things are settled.  A P person does not like to be limited by a decision and likes to keep all the options open as long as possible, usually regretting and second-guessing after a decision has been locked in.  I am a P, but not a straight up P who enjoys keeping the options open.  I am a P who feels constant guilt every single day of my life because I am not a J, because (in my mind) a J is the way a person ought to be.  But I am not.

Couple that with my N inability to break down the looming task before me, and you might have some idea of what I am going through right now.

Deerslayer

Last spring I bought a van.  It's a Honda Odyssey, and I got a great deal on it because it had hit a deer.

You can read a little about it here (but beware... that's a post I wrote when I was still quite sick, undiagnosed and unmedicated for my lupus).

Lately, I've been spending a great deal of time in this van.  Last night was the third night in a row that I got to sleep in my own bed after many nights away, and I tell you, it has been wonderful to be home.

My most recent trip was a whirlwind jaunt to Illinois to look for a house with Shawn.  Prior to that, I'd gone to western Pennsylvania and also to Minnesota through Cleveland.  Actually, I've been seeing quite a lot of Cleveland lately, and Interstate 90.  Incidentally: Madison, Wisconsin is a beautiful city.

Back to the van.  Ever since we bought it, it's had a jiggle, a vibration, a shake.  This is unnoticeable when driving around town and neighborhoods, but it increases exponentially on the highway.  I attribute it to the collision with a deer that lurks in the van's past history.  If you get over 80 MPH, the drive smooths out, but, of course, that's not safe either.  So we drive, and shake, and 6-12 hours later, when I get out, my body continues to quiver for quite a long time.

Monday, on our way home from Illinois, the first seven hours of the drive were not so bad.  The worst thing was all the dead deer.  I've never seen so many dead deer.  There were big deer, small deer, mangled deer, bloated deer, deer by the median and deer by the shoulder.  Strangely, on Saturday, on our way out, there had been hundreds of police pulling people over everywhere.  On Monday, on our way home, multitudinous dead deer had replaced the multitudinous police forces.

As the sun set and the highway darkened, the deer carcasses took on a more macabre tone.  We didn't see them in the same way; the shadows hid the bodies.  The van whizzed along through the black night, vibrating.  At random, unpredictable intervals the fan of illumination from our headlights swept across blood on the road, and our eyes would follow the bloodstain to the humped over carcass of a deer off on the side.  During the day, I never noticed the blood, but at night it glistened red under the moving lights on the black asphalt, thickening near the roadkill.  It was a dark night.

In Buffalo we noticed that we were out of gas, but we decided that it would be quicker to continue on to the next thruway service center, rather than getting off and searching for a gas station in the city.  Going west into Buffalo, there are a couple of service centers right before you arrive.  However (and we should have known this), coming east out of Buffalo, there is not a service center for a good, long time.

Finally we saw the sign for the Pembroke service center in 15 miles.  The gas gauge was awfully completely registering empty, but we tightened our jaws and set our faces, praying under our breath, and continued on.  There was nothing else to do, and by the grace of God we arrived before the tank gave out.  After the darkness of the thruway, the bright lights and garish, cartoony red and orange signs for gas and soda assaulted our senses despite the relief it was to be there.  Between the lateness of the night, the vibrations of the van (now after more than nine hours), and the fast food I'd injudiciously eaten for dinner, I was feeling very carsick, with a strong stomach cramp.  We filled up and set out once again for our last lap.

I can never rest while I am in a vehicle.  I have to watch the road, as if by watching, by straining my eyes, I can somehow control our safety.  I huddled in my seat, arms crossed over my cramping midsection, and kept my eyes peeled out the dark windshield.  There was nothing, nothing, nothing, and then, from out of nowhere, a deer was standing in the middle of the road, silhouetted like a cardboard cut-out.  I saw bristled white and gray hairs on its side, illuminated by our headlights.  It was completely still, and its head was oddly down, as though it was grazing on the tar.  It was directly in front of us.

Shawn gasped as I screamed, low and guttural, the kind of scream that rakes your throat and almost gags you.  Shawn's strong hands grasped the steering wheel hard as he swerved onto the rumble strip on the shoulder as the quiet night filled with desperate noises, my scream, the thundering road, a horn honking long and mournful.  It was our horn, I found out later.  He'd squeezed the wheel so hard, the horn just sounded, almost as involuntarily as I had screamed.

He missed it.  And he got us back onto the road.  I cupped my fingers over my mouth and sucked deep breaths through them, trembling, thanking Jesus, worried for the cars behind us, sorry for the deer that would surely not live to see another sunrise.

Five things I wish I could do before I leave Syracuse...

1.  Ride the train in to NYC and see a Broadway show.  Twenty-five years in Syracuse NY, and during that time I have never once visited NYC nor seen a play on Broadway.  In a way, that's impressive.  Impressive, but rather sad.

2.  Go to Biscotti's, order something delicious and chocolate, sit at a table with coffee and desert and eat while looking out the window at North Salina Street.  I have never been to Biscotti's.  It seems as though most of the other members of my family have.

3.  Use my passport and drive to Montreal where I would spend a weekend trying to speak French, eating in sidewalk cafes and pretending to be in Paris.  I will never live as close to Montreal as I do now.

4.  Visit the historic house museum in Liverpool near the corner of 2nd and Sycamore.  I see it every year when we are in the village for the Memorial Day Parade, and sometimes other times too.  It never happens to be open when I am there.  I wish/hope/dream that someday I will write down the hours and visit it when it is open.  Or perhaps it is not even a museum anymore, and I am already too late.

5.  I would really like to see the University Hospital area near Almond and Adams finished and complete, not under construction.  I declare, during the entire 25 years that I have lived here, that area has been under construction and bedecked with temporary trailers, temporary chain link fences, piles of dirt, orange cones and miscellaneous construction equipment.  (I hope I have a better chance of achieving some of the other items on this list than I have of this one.)

House showings -- 10 things I have learned

Note to self:  In your next life, don't put your house on the market during the week leading up to your son's college graduation.  That is all.  Maybe.

10 things I have learned:

1.  It is impossible to have everything perfect, all at once.  It's OK.

2.  When the viewers show up 35 minutes ahead of schedule, you may not be able to dry the clean dishes and put them away.  You may be stuck leaving them in the dish drainer.  This is not the end of the world, and you do not need to cry about it.

3.  After a viewing, you will return home to find some lights turned off (because you turned ALL of them on), and often the shower curtains will be rumpled.

4.  After a viewing, you will not find any information or feedback on Facebook, as much as you might wish for it to be there.

5.  Even when you know a good length of time in advance that people will be viewing your home, it is hard to master those last 20 minutes before you leave: polishing every counter and mirror, wiping the last doggie nose smudges off the sidelights by the front door, straightening the bathroom towels and making sure that a pie is in the oven, baking away at 325 degrees to give a nice, warm, homey smell and feel to the kitchen.  And swiffing the floor behind you on the way out the back door.

6.  Getting ready to leave your house in the hands of a realtor and his client makes your heart pound and your armpits sweat.  It just does.  This is not because you are doing anything wrong.

7.  It stinks when you work for 2 hours, cleaning, polishing, arranging... and then your neighbor tells you that the people only stayed and looked for about 10 minutes.  But, at least they were not no-shows.  It really stinks when you spend 2 hours cleaning, polishing and arranging for a no-show.

8.  If you want fresh flowers in your vases, carnations last a lot longer than tulips.

9.  Everybody has different taste.  This is OK.  You are not a bad person if you like old fashioned things and your buyer likes ultra modern.  The converse is also true.

10.  God is in control.  The house will sell to the people he has designed to buy it, at the time he designated for them to make the purchase.  So... no worries.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.  And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us...
                                             Acts 17:24-27

Empty

The house is clean.

It isn't perfectly clean, but it is empty.  It feels empty.

I literally jump when I go around the corner into the kitchen and come face-to-face with the bare, naked refrigerator which has been stripped of all its glory and the chronicles of our life.

David's desk has been removed from behind the sectional in the family room, leaving a large empty space and some dents in the carpet.

We took the leaf out of the kitchen table and put two of the chairs into the basement.  There's so much space in there now, it makes my stomach suck empty air.

I suppose there is mercy in this phase, this time of removing our personality, our us-ness, from our home.  Perhaps this will help us set our faces towards the new home God has for us, the one we have not quite discovered yet.

Last time I blogged, I wanted to post pictures of our house, not selling pictures, but pictures of the way it has looked as we have lived here.  I was in a rush, and the pictures were taking forever to load, and I gave up.

I will try again, not to get everything into one post, but to dig out a few pictures that express my heart.

The family room while DJ's desk was still in it.

Another view of the family room.

The kitchen table, already stripped down in size.

My kitchen before I "de-cluttered" the refrigerator.  

Personally, I like refrigerator clutter.  It is how I scrapbook.

Our dining room, which up until now was Shawn's office, and this is one change 

that I am not sad about... I love this room when it is done as a dining room. 

The dining room from the living room.

The sofa side of the living room (the piano is on the other side... 

I'll need to get a picture of that, too, before we leave).

The stairway, whose woodwork we just had redone in oak.

The study, where I sit and look out the window at my roses 

(except they aren't blooming yet).

My bedroom with its new wood floor.

It is not the most fantastically beautiful house in the world, but it is just the way I like it.  I get tired thinking about starting all over.  But it will be OK.

NOT the realtor's pictures

We took the kitchen table down to a four-seater from a six-seater.  I guess this is OK.  I wanted to get pictures of my house before I leave.  And I wanted to do it before the realtor got everything all sanitized, with the pictures on the refrigerator and such.  But the table has already been reduced.

The cherry tree in all its glory.

The front, a week ago...  the buds and blossoms exploded since then.

The daffodils, because I love them.  I will need to plant new ones at the next house.

Skipping to this one... too many problems uploading, not enough time.