I didn’t know it, but God did and I love it when God just keeps giving and showing you confirmations that you are following His will and purpose. That you are on the right path.
The next step in moving was contacting my daughter and grandchildren, to tell them the news of selling the home they’d grown up in and moving to my new home. It was difficult for them because they had all grown up in the home in some way, by living there or spending the weekends and holidays. They had all placed their keepsakes in the attic, and the wall in the basement playroom (as we all called it) had everyone’s handprint and growth chart. The move was going to touch and affect everyone’s heart. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy at all and all I could do was pray and hope they would understand and perhaps make a trip home before it was home to someone else.
My twin grandsons were able to come and stay with me for about 2 weeks and help pack and move some of the items. Having their last stay in the house, they looked forward to coming and staying with me at my new home in Texas, because it’s a new place they’ve never been.
My daughter’s reactions were mainly what I had expected and some of what I didn’t. She was very sad that I was moving and selling the house. So many memories of her and the fun times that she had as a teenager. Like bringing home her oldest daughter when she was born her sophomore year and was still living at home. The memories of fixing up the baby’s room with decor and that we had painted a rainbow on the wall, not knowing whether the baby was she or he. Such an adorable room for the new baby.
My daughter also became a big supporter for me as did my 3 other grandchildren. Their support and enthusiasm was a big lift and encouragement for me. To be told that it was finally my time to begin a new life, to go and enjoy a different city and a new home of my own was so comforting to me. It was time. I had gone through the pain and the hurt and did the therapy, recovery, and work of healing and climbed that mountain, so Yes, it was my time! Now I pray that my children and grandchildren will do the same. If we stop growing or changing we are only dying.
I have never had a home of my very own in my lifetime. I got married to my children’s father right out of high school and when we divorced and I moved back to my childhood town, I lived with my parents for a few weeks while I found work and a place to rent. Doing that for a couple of years until I met my ex-husband and we bought a home together. It was my home for 31 years but it wasn’t just my home.
Now I have a home that is mine and only mine and I have thoroughly enjoyed furnishing it and doing it the way I choose to do it. But God is the One who gets all the Honor and Glory for it. Because He is the One who opened up Heaven’s Gates and blessed my life with it. And every place He sent me to, to purchase what I needed, and each time I went into the stores, there was a Believer there to help me. Now that is what I call God’s divine path and provision.
As everything got closer to the closing dates it became more exciting for me. The grandsons were still staying with me and we would have our last Christmas there, as well as our last meal together in the home that we all loved before they left to go back to their home in Rapid City. It was definitely a sad time when you realized it was all coming to an end and life as you knew it was about to change forever. I was excited for the new changes deep inside of me but yet my heart hurt for all the closing doors that were about to happen. Closing for the way I had known things for so many years.
I enjoyed the two weekends I had help from my brother and sister in love. It was a time to enjoy them without any interruptions from other family members. We worked hard and accomplished so much. It felt good to give my brother so many pieces of the family heritage items that I had acquired over the years from my dad. It felt good to give them to him and know that he is the only one in my family to carry on the family name and will carry the family heritage too. Those are the moments and memories I will cherish forever.
Closing dates were set now and as I closed on my home, I would need to immediately leave for my new home, my new city, and state, my new address, and my new life in Texas. What an amazing journey to get to this place in my life. Closing my home on my ex-husband’s birthday. Does God make an amazing ending or what? Only God can correlate things like that. Telling my ex-husband of my closing date, in a joking way I told him I was giving him the greatest birthday gift ever, I’d be leaving town forever. It was a nice moment of laughter and a few tears as well.
The moving company from a loved furniture store in town had come to pack me up the day before closing so I could just leave town. So many different thoughts and feelings go through your mind and heart in a journey like this. Sure happened to me anyway. After all, I had been in my home for half my life at this point and my hometown for all but 4 years of my 60 years. It was a change of great new beginnings and sad ones of leaving so much behind. The saddest moment of my moving was when I realized I was leaving behind the wall of memories and those moments will never happen again. The little hand prints and measurements that marked the wall. Especially on the birthdays and the special drawing from my oldest granddaughter when she came back home to live. She had insisted that she needed to do her artwork there where everyone else was.
The week of final preparation and packing I received a phone call from the local realtor’s assistant telling me the realtor of the new buyer needed to stop by and measure a room downstairs. I agreed and didn’t think anything of it. When the realtor of the buyer arrived she explained to me why she was there and why she needed to measure the wall downstairs. She was giving me a closing gift which I thought was a bit odd because I wasn’t her client. Then she proceeded to let me know the wall she was going to measure and take photos of was the wall of my family’s handprints and measurements. Yep, that wall. She was having one of her friends print out the photo on a canvas so that I would have the memory of this special wall forever and hang it in my new home. She and the buyer realized how special the wall was to me and the significance of it in my home there and in my life. How it had saddened me that I was going to have to leave it behind. It now hangs in the guest bedroom of my new home and I look at it quite often and think about the little ones who left the prints on the wall and on my heart. It will hang there for as long as I’m in my home. What a magnificent gift I received. I didn’t know it-But God did!