Saying Goodbye.
I like think of, and treat most of things in life, as if they have personalities. If you’ve read my book, you know I have a tendency, sexist or not, to call inanimate thing around me ‘she’.
For instance… history is full of ships that are referred to as ‘she’. Aircraft, spaceships, etc. as well… and let me tell you, my old Jaguar was most definitely a ‘she’. For real… 🙂
Like any of you are shocked, I have digressed. Back to my point. I am watching Elizabeth say goodbye to her farm.
It isn’t easy, it isn’t fun, and it isn’t over.
It is a process.
For those of us who have a lot of bark (as in tree), a few miles, grey hair in all of the right places, we know that ‘moving on’ happens in this bubble we call ‘life’. Change is inevitable. The question is ‘how do you take on and handle change?’.
For those of us who’ve lost, or had to leave our homes, this is a small dedication to ‘The Farm’ and a reminder to thank God for all of the ‘places’ He has provided for us.
This was a place that on freezing cold winter nights, your wood stoves kept the farm warm with their glow and heat. During the snow, ice, and wet winters, you sheltered Elizabeth and her children time and time again. Yes, when the wind blew outside, it blew just a ‘wee’ bit harder on the inside because you were built 100 years ago. But you are still standing strong. Yes, the wood that fired these stoves was carried in daily, sometime more, to keep the killing chill out, but you were worth it.
Before Elizabeth, you were literally standing not long after the Wright brothers flew, and it is very possible that the owners came home with a new paper dated April, 1912 and read about the Titanic sinking. Before there was pavement in that part of Wake County, the farm was there. Electricity was still in its infancy when children were running through your doors. The agrarian farm life was all the farm knew and all the farm understood. Living off the land was the norm. Driving away to work was totally foreign during those early years.
As the years flew past, additions to the building as well as the people grew. Children grew up, parents passed on, the house was sold for the exchange of money and time. As the years passed, like old great ladies, your mysteries continued to deepen and grow. Though your floors sagged in places and insulation wasn’t invented when you were built, you still stood, summer, fall, winter, and spring, year, after year, after year.
By the time Elizabeth came along, the dream was to bring her children up within your walls and on the land. She planned on living there with her horses and family till the timbers of her own body gave way. Yet, that wasn’t meant to be, and times have changed. The dream of always driving up to the 200 year old oak tree, which was old when you were built, has passed on and moved away.
You stood with them as each the horses left, either by death, or delivery to a new home. You stood by as family members moved in, and moved out. You were ever vigilant to provide a incubator for love to grow. You provided a place of solitude during the storms of life, providing open land for shooting stars, and the twinkling lights of the sky to shine down from the blue/black velet of night.
In truth, the farm is dead now. Once Elizabeth took her heart from it, the life which so easily made the old timbers vibrate with love, has ceased to move. It is standing alone now, waiting for the next owners to fill its walls with love, laughter and joy, heartache, worry, and all that this thrilling yet crooked life can sometime offer.
From the last days of the horses to the last days of Joshua, Jonathan and Elizabeth, we say ‘thank you’. You’ve been good for them in all ways, and you’ve been there through the next phase of life for the boys and Elizabeth.
For the future, we say “greetings’ with a enthusiastic feeling of as good as the last 10 years were. What has God for us in the future?
I hope you each have had places in life where you’ve connected, loved, lost, grew and continued your journeys.
