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My mom and dad divorced before I was born.  Based on pictures of my earliest days, she and I lived with her parents – my PawPaw and Granny – until she married her second husband.  Admittedly, a child’s perception of things is not always accurate, but even so, I have no good memory of life with that man.  It seems like we lived in a house with him at some point, but my most vivid memories with him are of us living in a van, driving around the country, wherever he could find work.  I remember laying on a mattress in the back of that van while he and Momma sat up front.  I remember eating beanie weanies and junk food while he drank.  I remember stopping to swim one time, and him trying to get me to go out farther in the water than I was safe to go when I had no idea how to swim.  

The two times Momma got pregnant, her husband took us home to PawPaw and Granny’s until she had the babies, then he came back around after they were born.  I remember us going with him some time after my brother was born, but we must not have after my sister was born because we were at PawPaw and Granny’s when I started kindergarten.  Three adults and three kids age 6 and under in a single wide trailer.  I didn’t know then that we were crowded.  I just knew my PawPaw was my best friend and that he loved the Lord and loved us kids.  

We would go play at his mom’s house – my great-grandmother who we called MawMaw Hale, and I knew she loved us too.  LIttle kids can just tell when they’re loved.  During the summer before first grade, I overheard MawMaw talking to PawPaw and Momma: “What if Precious came to live with me?  I could use her help.”  It turned out that she wasn’t looking for help in her old age.  She was looking to help this stringy-headed little girl and probably lighten the burden at my PawPaw’s house too.  

MawMaw’s house wasn’t big or fancy.  There were porches on the front and back.  She was great with flowers and had potted plants sitting along the length of the front porch and hanging pots above.  She was featured in the local newspaper one time for having a green thumb.  The front porch led into the living room, which we rarely ever used except for family gatherings at Christmas.  Off the living room to the right was a storage room that had previously been the entrance to a small store that my great-grandfather ran when he was living, and on the far wall was the door to the kitchen.  I can still see that kitchen in my mind from so many hours spent there as MawMaw made homemade apple pies, peanut butter balls or peanut brittle, homemade skillet-size pancakes…so much more…as I watched or helped or did homework while she worked.  

From the kitchen, a screen door led to the back porch and backyard, where my cousins and I played almost daily, or if you turned right from the kitchen, there was MawMaw’s room, which doubled as a den where we watched TV or just lived life.  You’d pass through a curtain from her room to my room and the only bathroom in the house.  There was no heating or air conditioning.  We had box fans and screened windows for air flow in summer and wall-mounted gas heaters for heat in the winter.  Life was simple, but it was good.  As she got older and her health declined, I did more around the house and did what I could to help take care of her when my aunts weren’t there.  One time, I was taking the pot from the bedside commode to empty and wash it out, and I tripped and spilled the contents on my bedroom carpet.  By the time I cleaned and scrubbed the mess and made it back to MawMaw, she thought I was sullen and avoiding her because of having to help.  I don’t remember ever minding having to help, but eventually she required more around-the-clock care than a twelve year old girl could give.  She went to live with one of my aunts, and I went to stay with PawPaw and Granny again.  

When MawMaw passed, they left the decision to me whether to stay with PawPaw and Granny or go live with my dad’s parents – Mom and Pop.  My older sister lived with them, and I’d visited off and on through the years, starting maybe around age six.  It was a big decision for a twelve year old child.  I didn’t want to hurt PawPaw and Granny or my brother and sister, but I just felt like I was supposed to go live with my other side of the family.  Looking back, I can only guess that it was the Lord prompting me, even as a child, in which direction I should go.  Mom and Pop were strict but incredibly loving.  We had more than I had to that point in life — a brick home, central heating and air, two family vehicles and later my own car, vacations…, but Mom and Pop weren’t wealthy, just hard-working and wise.  And they pushed my sister and I to be those things also.  

I realized early in life that if I was ever going to college, I would need to earn a scholarship.  I had educational opportunities with Mom and Pop and at my new school that I might not have had otherwise.  Because of this and a lot of hard work, I went to UAB on full scholarship after graduation.  That’s where I met my husband, and if you’ve been reading the blogs, you know how we met and eventually married.  

Neither of us came from “normal” childhoods or wealth.  We made our way through the years, building a life together.  Our first two years of marriage, until I finished PT school, we rented a townhouse.  Once I got my first full time job as a physical therapist, we bought our first home.  It was a cute 3 bedroom house about thirty minutes south of Birmingham, with a big front porch and a screened back porch.  Our oldest wasn’t quite two when we moved there.  Over the next eight years, we outgrew the house as we added two more little boys, and my mentally disabled mom came to live with us after my PawPaw passed away when I was thirty.  

By the time my husband’s work in ministry led us an hour and a half north and much closer to our families, we were ready for more living space.  Moving to a small town from the city brought the unexpected advantage of more bang for the buck.  We were able to get much more square footage within our budget, so my hope was to find a house with finished basement space so that I could be close enough to meet my mom’s needs but also have some separation and privacy.  And we found it about two minutes away from the new church where my husband would serve.  

It was a beautiful home set back in the woods on top of a hill.  There was a small stream that ran across the lower yard, mature landscaping in the front yard near the house, and an in-ground pool built into the terraced backyard.  As we drove up for the first time, I could envision my boys playing in the stream or in the pool, riding bikes down the hill, running around the yard.  It felt like home before I ever got out of the car.  And the inside of the house was just as perfect for us.  Two large bedrooms with a jack-n-jill bathroom and a loft play room on the upper level.  Master suite with a fireplace and separate vanities and closets on the main level along with a big eat-in kitchen and a large living room/dining room area with vaulted ceilings, fire place, and a big picture window that covered the entire front wall overlooking the yard and woods on either side.  And a finished basement with a bar area that could serve as my mom’s kitchenette, large den w/ built-in entertainment center and fireplace, bathroom, two rooms that could serve as bedrooms for my mom and his when she visited, and tons of storage space.  There was a separate garage and workshop for additional storage.  It was a dream for someone who hated clutter like I did.  

And it seemed the perfect place for a life of ministry.  We hosted youth fellowships, swim parties for families of young children, pumpkin carving parties, staff Christmas parties.  Somehow though, as he transitioned from youth pastor to pastor and we had multiple kids in sports, life got hectic and we used the house less and less for those opportunities.  In fact, as life got more stressful, I used the house – specifically, keeping it clean and orderly – as my sanity.  So many times I said, “The world around me can be falling down, but if the house is in order, I’ll be ok.”  

I found this to be an absolute lie.  When the world around me actually came crashing down with my husband’s infidelity and leaving, the house did nothing for me.  I did what I could to keep it, not wanting the kids to lose one more thing or have any further change right then.  And for a time, I kept it because I genuinely believed my husband would come back home to us.  When he didn’t though, the house I had loved so dearly became an enemy taunting me.  Memories were everywhere.  The mortgage was a financial burden.  Maintaining a large house, large yard, and saltwater pool while tending a newborn, juggling the sports schedules of three boys, and working was almost overwhelming.  Things were breaking down, and I was near a breaking point.  

Then a friend contacted me.  Her father-in-law had passed around the time of my divorce, and her mother-in-law no longer wanted to live by herself in the house.  They wanted a big family to live there and had thought of us.  Initially, I wasn’t ready.  My heart and soul had not yet released the plans and hopes I had for the future, even if I knew I would soon have to.  I needed to make sure the kids had healed enough to handle another major change although I was starting to see it might benefit us all to be some place we could make our own memories. 

I was out by the pool one day, noticing how badly I needed to weed around my day lilies and trim the crepe myrtles and hedges, when it occurred to me that I had not noticed or even seen what needed to be done until then.  As much as I loved my plants and had for years tended them with care, there had not been enough alive in my soul to even care about them for the previous year or so.  It was like with that realization, my soul was waking up.  My vision was clearing a bit.  I could see through a haze that I was suffering in my present reality because I was holding onto a dream that was shattered.  It was time to let go.  Of the dream, the broken marriage, and the house.  It was time to move on.  It was time to notice my flowers and rediscover the things that made me, me.  It was time to be happy and find joy in life again.  

It was time to trust the Lord’s provision, which is what I realized my friend was offering me in her in-laws’ house.  Having never seen the place, I told her that I accepted their offer.  I trusted God had gone ahead of me, preparing and providing for us, but I never expected the extent of blessing and the ways He had done exceeding abundantly more than I could ask or think.