Remembering all the different places and houses where you have lived may be a long list for some of you to recall. My list is not very long. My mother and father met at what they would call today a Christian Conference. The rest of the courtship was by mail. Mom said she knew Dad loved the Lord Jesus with his whole heart and he loved her too. He was in the Airforce stationed in Texas. She got on a bus in Missouri and traveled to Texas to get married. The lady that had sat next to her on the bus was the witness at the Justice of the Peace for the wedding ceremony. The Airforce moved Dad to California where he was born and raised. They lived with his parents for a couple of years and had my older brother. When dad’s time in the service was up, they moved to Missouri.
The “Old House” as we referred to it had been built by the railroad long ago. It had no running water, no bathroom, no kitchen. It was a big two-story house sturdy but not what you would call good looking. It was heated by an old wood stove that was in the living-kitchen, dining, bedroom combo-room. It was on a large piece of land owned by my grandad, so the rent was nothing. They had another child, my other brother, in around a year. I didn’t come along for another 6 years. The big windmill that was at the side of the house supplied all the water. Dad was quite the inventor. He rigged up a system to pump the water up to big barrels on the second floor of the house and gravity would bring it down to the sinks. He partitioned off an area for the kitchen and the bathroom from the big room. They took up dairy farming for most of those years. Mom spoke of how hard it was to say goodbye to the cows they had spent so much time with when dad changed jobs.
My grandad gave me a lamb every year to bottle raise. One day one of the little lambs got so excited to see me coming with his bottle he jumped in the cattle tank full of water. Dad was quick to fish him out and dry him off. There was a large garden between the house and the bard yard that I remember spending a lot of time in with my mother. This was our house on the prairie and we loved it. Dad felt bad that we lived in this kind of place, but he was saving money and building a new house as the extra money came. On the day we moved into the new house it was free and clear of any debt.
None of us minded living in this old house because it wasn’t the structure, it was the love that was shared in this place. The “new house” was my home for the next 16 years and it holds wonderful memories during this time also. My parents lived there for the rest of their lives. I married and since then I have only lived in 3 places. Stan and I have been in the same home now for 49 years. Here we raised our family and stored precious memories in this home. The places you spend your time in life are not nearly as important as the people you share it with. Memories of sharing, laughing and crying together, living with contentment is the best place.
2 Corinthians 5:1 “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in Heaven, not built by human hands.”
Until next time,
Grandma Lynn