We're home from our house-hunting trip without a house. When our hope fell apart on a darling white farm house with a weather cock, bookshelves, dentil moulding and chintz wallpaper the day before we were scheduled to fly back to Texas, I had to ask Jason not to mention 177 Chapel Lane again.
Even when, in the middle of the week, we experienced "offer accepted" elation, I reminded myself to nail a mental image of that dream home to the center of a cross.
On Thursday, we saw a little boy on the Metro with a rare disease that made him difficult to behold, except to his mother and older brother. They apparently doted on him. He was smoothing back the mane on a little stuffed lion and staring with adoration at his mother who was staring back with even deeper adoration.
All in the midst of this Easter time, when hopes lay dead in a tomb, he asks us to find shelter in his arms because we all have this not-so-rare disease called pride. We forget that, no matter how on top of our game we may feel, we cannot even number our own days. No matter how organized our financial portfolio, we cannot control the world market. No matter how pure the diet or how rigorous the exercise, we cannot prevent age and disease.
On Good Friday, I knew we would make an offer on the white farm house with dogwood trees at each corner. On Saturday, I imagined how I would arrange window treatments and furniture. I picked out masculine wall paper for Jonathan's room and imagined where the play equipment would be placed in the yard. Sunday, we worshiped in Winchester, proclaiming our hope in a risen Christ... the God of the impossible...the God of the miracle... our hope and our joy. We listened to the pastor tell about Lucy's hope in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Had she not "pushed through" into Narnia, she would have remained in a musty old wardrobe, unaware of the land beyond where she was destined to become a queen.
On Tuesday we received word that our counter-counter offer was accepted. Wednesday we worked on financing and Thursday an inspection revealed, by early afternoon, that we would not be buying the house.
I am the child whose heart is deformed by greed and pride sitting still and silent under the adoring gaze of a loving Father. He knows my disappointment. He knows my fear and anxiety. And he asks me to believe the impossible.
So I push at the back of the wardrobe as if it were a stone covering a tomb; knowing that there's more. I believe the fairy tale because the one who woos my soul to him is really the Prince disguised as a woodcutter. He asks me to love him as the woodcutter because, like all of us, he wants, more than anything, evidence of my true love. He does not want me to love his splendor. He wants me to love his heart.
So I love him when I don't get the white farm house, flanked by dogwoods and crawling with ladybugs (They're good luck you know!). Did I mentioned the paneled study and the bookshelves? I love the woodcutter...the Carpenter... the One who laid his whole life down to rescue me. He made me to love farmhouses and mountain views, dogwoods and daffodils, chintz wallpaper and paneled studies full of books. He also knows, better than I, that sometimes what I want isn't really what is needed. The fairy tale is ingrained in us all, and one day, in the strength of his Love, he will kiss all true believers awake to the splendor.
