Ten Years

 May 11, 2023

Time has a way of sneaking up from behind and giving you a nip in the posterior when you aren’t paying attention. Even when you’re aware of its passing, it surprises you when you realize how many years are behind you. Of course, I’m talking like the old man I am. I remember in the ‘50s my father talking about living in the ‘30s, and thinking to myself, “Wow! That was a long time ago!” To think that it was more than twenty years ago that we turned into a new Millenium! The muscle cars I grew up with are now fifty to sixty years old. 

Today holds special meaning for me, for ten years ago today, we moved into our present (and hopefully, last) home. I had thought our last home (the first we had ever owned) would also be our forever home, but I hadn’t counted on Linda’s desire to live in Sinclairville. The home we lived in for 13 years, the home in which I had remodeled two bathrooms, added an entry room, tore down two supporting walls to enlarge the kitchen (which I also remodeled), and open up the dining and living room, turned out not to be the one where they would carry me out feet first.

This is, Lord willing, that home. We bought it, completely gutted and remodeled it, and over the course of these ten years, added a master bedroom, a laundry room, and a third bay in the garage. Linda keeps talking about adding a Great Room, but I’m getting to the age where about all I can muster enthusiasm for is a not-so-great room.  I even bought our grave plots so they would be the last ones overlooking our home from the cemetery above the bank across the road. I’ve threatened to install a periscope in mine to keep an eye on the place when I’m gone.

Some people like to move around a lot. I don’t mind traveling, but settling a house is not my idea of fun. There’s something within me that is at odds with the Biblical notion of being merely pilgrims in this world. That being said, I know the dangers of getting too comfortable in this life. If there isn’t within me a longing for something this world cannot provide, I would be unable to distance myself from it enough to obtain an eternal perspective on life, and without that, I know  I would find myself in a death spiral of depression. The more I see of this life, the more I long for that to come, and the more the ancient Christian cry appeals to me: “Maranatha”—Come, Lord Jesus!