I go to IHOP, International House of Prayer Atlanta, frequently whenever I can. It's my quiet place. It gives me time alone outdoors in nature to spend with the Lord, praying, journaling, worshipping.
On my way there I pass a street. Many streets, of course, but a street which leads to the neighborhood in which I grew up as a little girl. And I had a whim the other day to drive by the house my family lived in until I was eight-years-old.
I didn't know why. Why I wanted to drive by. Why I had that urge, that whim. Why I followed it. But I did.
I wanted to go home.
I turned my car down our street. "Ashton Place" was the name of our neighborhood. The sign was dirty and showing signs of wear from the years.
What I saw though as I drove slowly through the neighborhood of my old home broke my heart.
I saw unkept yards. Older cars lined up parked on the street. Stained siding on the houses. Grass and weeds popping up through the cracks in the curb and the street and the driveways. An untastefully-painted bright teal house.
What was this place?
Nostalgia overwhelmed by senses and a million memories seemed to flash through my mind.
I saw through the trees in the neighboring subdivision the giant hill my dad had taken me over to to sled down one cold winter when the subdivision was still only under construction. That late afternoon as we had plodded back together through the snow to hot chocolate my mom had waiting for us in the kitchen- that happy moment of just me and my dad- had filled my young heart with so much happiness and deep contentment, warming me from within.
I saw again myself six-years-old tromping in my rain boots through the grass in the backyard after my dad, going to pick ripened tomatoes and peppers with him from his thriving vegetable garden. The garden now looked like a jungle overgrown.
I saw myself playing dress-up and house inside with my mom between her cooking dinner in the evenings.
I saw my sisters and I sitting on the front doorstep with our cat Prancer, years' gone from us now.
I saw our white house with its green shutters, now repainted tan and brown. 664 Carriage Court. I almost didn't recognize it.
I saw the hill in our backyard and the plucky little girl I was that snowy day when I stood up to the stranger boys bigger and older than me, wanting to use "my" hill to sled down, and I told them to "get out of my yard."
I saw myself taking walks around the neighborhood with my mom and dad in the long summer evenings after dinner was eaten and the kitchen was cleaned. I remember the mosquito bites. The mosquitoes always loved me. We would return home when the fireflies were just sparking like magic in the shadows of the woods.
I saw in my mind again my quiet place. The Jack-and-Jill printed white hamper by the window in a corner of my small pink carousal-horse-decorated bedroom. I saw myself as the girl so young and so innocent, sitting on that hamper, my children's Bible in hand, looking out the window in the stillness and silence as the sun set in the evenings before dinner time. Thinking, praying, feeling the Lord's presence overwhelm me and fill my heart with peace and contentment indescribable.
Just as it still does.
Life has changed a lot since those days. Since I've called that place "home."
And going back wasn't the same as it was when I was a little girl. I can't go back to those days.
Sometimes we aren't supposed to.
Life is a storybook with new chapters revealed piece-by-piece. Every day is another page in the story the Lord has written for each of us. And when one chapter draws to an end, it's time to turn the page and begin another anew. My childhood is closed. My teenhood is closed. My transition between teenhood and young adulthood is closed.
I'm here. I'm in the now. And I'm about to start another chapter as this one ends with the close of the year. And I can't go back. I can't look back. If I try, it just isn't the same.
When one season of life ends, we have to let go and move onto the next. And sometimes that means leaving people and memories behind as we begin a new chapter. And that's okay. It's how life is meant to unfold. Change is inevitable. We can't fight it and we shouldn't try.
But some things never do change. Love. Family. Faith. Truth. And Jesus.
Make life count. Invest in the things that don't change with time. And never- never- take for granted a single moment, a single memory, a single breath we breathe. Fifteen years from now, when you can't go back to a time and a place you once lived in, they'll be there tucked away in your heart forever when your thoughts turn back in nostalgia to days gone by.
It'll bring a tear and a smile.
And then you'll move forward again on.
Because that's the way that this precious life is intended to be.
"All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 139:16
"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace." Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
"The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." 1Peter 1:24&25
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