Good bones

It’s the week friends.

THE week.

Did I leave the house to write with no less than TWO Valentine’s sweaters on?

Why yes, yes I did.

If you’re like me the events swirling around us make home and marriage and hot tea with the perfect ratio of cream and raw sugar seem so low on the totem pole that they almost don’t register at all.

Good tea, good homes and good marriages just don’t seem like enough.

I get it.

But a candle in my kitchen window tells me another story.

It reminds me that any speck of light makes a way in the darkness.

So if you’re ready to pack up and head to the hills just remember that your marriage is a light that shows your children that good still overcomes evil every single time.

So get out the raw sugar and read on.

This week was the funeral of my husband’s 98 year old Grandma.

There was singing and hugging and cheek kisses that remind you how good it is to be called “family.”

One special guest at the funeral was Grandma’s youngest sister.

She lived close to her for many years and when it was time for me to officially meet the family one Christmas, it was at her house that I stayed.

Someone I never met welcomed me with open arms and placed my worn duffle bag on HER bed in a beautiful bedroom.

I was so struck by her kindness that I was speechless to even ask her where she would sleep.

I had never had someone, especially someone I’d never met give up their bed for me.

I mean who was I?

Just a college kid who happened to think her great nephew was the best thing I had ever laid eyes on.

And the very next morning I was engaged and on my way to making this dear woman true blue family.

But in my heart I had already made the leap.

I told her this story as I knelt by the rocking chair she sat in, her eyes stained with tears.

And then on our way to set up the church for the viewing we passed by our old street and I forgot that the house we brought all of our kids home to,

The house that made us a family had been condemned and recently leveled to dirt.

Completely demolished with not even a chip of paint to prove that so much love and living had soaked into the floorboards.

When the window passed the street sign and I remembered it was gone my heart just caught in my throat and the tears fell in buckets.

Almost as if my heart registered the loss before my brain did.

The ache came from the idea that a whole season of my life looked like it had never even taken place.

I remember when the owner was trying to sell the house to my husband he mentioned how the air conditioner could “blow snowballs!”

We laugh at his words now, but you know how someone standing in a real fixer-upper will tap a wall, smile and say that the house has “good bones.”

The potential is there even if the stove stopped working in the 90’s and the carpet has seen too many dogs to mention.

I wiped all the tears on McDonalds napkins and stepped into the church to begin set up for the viewing and couldn’t shake the idea of all of our memories were now dust.

The walls that taught me to be a wife and a mother and that both of these demand promises are kept.

Completely gone.

As if we were never there, never had our first argument in the kitchen, never tried to grow watermelons just off the back porch, never stenciled ivy in the living room and never walked baby after baby back to the crib after a long night.

And I held picture frames with wedding photos from the Second World War and wondered if memories only live forever in the hearts and minds of those who carry them.

There’s a box in the garage with love letters in it.

They’ve made the journey across states and years and purges because they are the bones of our marriage.

The first noticing of each other.

Some silly, some deep, some on parchement with burnt edges to make them seem medieval and some on red construction paper.

Some make me laugh and some make me roll my eyes and wonder if we even had a clue.

Spoiler alert, we didn’t.

It’s one giant, messy, sappy clear tub of good bones.

Our house has needed a new roof for more than a few years but I never wake and wonder if we should pack up and move because of the work that needs completed.

Just as a busy season, ministry hiccup or parenting dilemma reminds me that my forever sweetheart and I need a day or three away to figure life out again, but never has me wanting to bail on togetherness completely.

Good bones have seen us through a whole lot of life and I’m crazy thankful.

The promises that potential is built on still make my heart smile.

A new coat of paint would do us good, for sursies.

The weathering shows a bit and the walls may need patched,

But the inside jokes run deep.

Happy Valentine’s Friends.