Recollection and Remembrance

The house I grew up in was over a hundred years old when we moved there, and through the years it became to me--is it foolish to say?--almost a fifth member of my family.  

I felt it to be like a quiet grandmother, looking at me with amusement and affection from behind the wisdom of many years, conferring upon me a sense of the weight of history from the time I was very little.   

I spent my childhood in that house feeling that I was a tiny piece of a bigger story, most of which I would never know.  The people who had lived their small parts before me still seemed very real there.  

They were the ones who had worn the smooth grooves in the ancient, wooden floors. They had read their books by the quaint, pink gaslights in the living room, and shoveled coal into the monstrous old furnace which now crouched like a tired dragon in the corner of the basement.  

Every square inch of our 80 acres was breathing out the remembrance of the people who had tilled it, planted the crops and placed the trees, marked out the pathways, built the foot bridges and stacked up the stone walls.
    
The first house had been built well over a century ago--so small!  And then it burned down.  The second house was built, again small, but sturdy.  Then it was added to.  Then came a garage (with an attic!)  

And then the house grew again to fit a large country family, rambling into a lovely jumble of seven bedrooms, two kitchens, two bathrooms, a dining room, a living room, and several more rooms of uncertain purpose.  All wrapped up in a big front porch.  

And finally, when I was four years old,  it became ours.

I remember my room with its cheerful yellow-sprigged wallpaper and the window that overlooked my favorite willow tree.  I thought it looked like a lady standing with her hair falling around her.  And there was a beech tree some distance away that tried so hard to touch her weeping branches, but never could.  

Every morning was something new--dew-rimmed fairy rings on the lawn, primrose blossoms along the driveway, fat, white mushrooms underneath the bird feeder.  

In the winter, my window glass would have a breath-taking frame of frost around the edges.  An extravagance of beauty from God for my eyes alone!  By mid-morning it was gone, only to be replaced by another perfect intricacy the next morning.   

And yet somehow I always carried the knowledge that in that place and among those passing scenes,  I was the thing that was most fleeting.

Someone else, a hundred years past, had rested her head on the windowsill in my room and let her eyes run between the trees in the side yard, across the fields, past distant neighbors, to the blue hills that stood so many miles away in a stately ring around Cryderman's pit, and felt the beautiful ache of a perfect day settle over her.  

And then, thirty years ago, it was my turn.  

And now it is someone else's. 

I remember standing under the "owl tree" in the back field and thinking about the roots that twisted down beneath my feet--beginning before anyone could remember and spreading farther than I could ever discover--and feeling very small.  

And then looking up into the perfect bowl of sky over my head and wondering how many souls had stood just there, with their heads tilted back, looking at that same patch of blue.  

They were all gone now.  And I would be gone one day too. 

I felt it so keenly!  But it was with interest--almost amusement.  Never fear.

Behind the owl tree sprawled our family garden.  It  had been "The Garden" since the original old homestead had been built, the ruins of which still stood crumbling beside the strawberry patch, and from time to time the old dirt would share one of its rusty secrets--most often nails, but sometimes a button, a buckle, or part of an old garden implement.   
 
Good medicine for me--for any child, I think--to grow up among antiques and artifacts, tangible evidence of ancient lives that had flamed up, burned, and flickered out long before I was even a thought!
 
The thing that kept me from grieving over my own transience and  the brevity of every good thing was my utter trust in a Great and Perfect Father, who was lavish in love for me.  

I had faith that I was placed and kept in my season, in a place that was good, for a purpose that was beautiful.  In safety, always.  

Everywhere.

And that was enough to cover the reality of being so slight and fragile--so much like the frost on my window that came in glory and shined and then vanished...

Thank you, Lord, for settling my soul tonight with the vivid remembrance of my younger faith--one that burned with expectation and brightness;  in peaceful constancy, even amidst the shadows of all that was passing away.  

Everything that I am worried about today will play itself out somehow.  

Tomorrow will come.  And go. 

Whether I am met with my worst fears or the greatest happiness, my little drama will eventually wrap itself into the gauze of human history and I will be gently folded into your Great arms.  

And held, as I have always been.

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You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you--

Isaiah 26:3

 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:16-19