A little of home

I never saw a key to the house I grew up in. Surely we had one-but there was ever a need for it; the doors were never locked.

Huge Oak at the end of the driveway. Tire swing. A rock waterfall in front of the garden...Front yard, home to dozens of touch football games(and injuries), just beyond the stairs leading to the front door of our home with the wooden porch swing. Images of home, built by daddy's hands and momma's love.

I knew the dog whose paw prints are in the cement basketball court. And I learned to shoot on the faded orange lines. There were countless nights I'd crawl on top of my car when the rest of the house was long asleep and find myself completely lost in the vast stars. It was those nights that I began to understand God's pursuit after me. He'd show off with those stars and make me feel like I was the only one who could possibly see the world as it was at that exact moment...and I knew, the stars always shine brightest at home.

My name is signed upside down on the window sill in my old room. And there's a hole in the carpet where I once spilled bleach. And if you want to know how tall I was when I was 11, it's on the wall by the pantry.

I liked to look out our kitchen window, through the pasture, across the creek, and up the hill to see the house where my parents met.

It may not be perfect to you with Pepto Bismol walls and holes hidden by frames. But it was.

I drove by it the other day. The grass is grown up and there's no longer vegetables in the garden and the water is drained from the pool...and I comfort myself with cliches-this isn't my home anyway and all good things must come to an end and something about chapters ending and beginning (which is where I always cut myself off)...

But some days, my arms ache climb the oak with my brother or spend an entire summer by the pool with my cousin or walk through the French doors to momma and daddy's room and crawl in bed with them.

They're just four walls,I know, but on overly sentimental days like this, they are much more.