Homeowner's Lament

I miss our brown couch. It's an interesting thing to miss in light of everything else we left behind. But it was a beautiful couch. Microfiber. Comfortable. It was a sectional and included a chaise that everyone fought over. We bought it just before our 11 year-old became very sick.A month after we pieced it together I watched this same son bang his head against it for 2 hours because he had lost his ability to walk. He had been up numerous nights with vomiting and vertigo. "I want to go run and play", he kept crying (and kept banging). Even with that vivid,horrifying memory I miss the brown couch. As I've sorted through my feelings, I realize it's not the couch I miss. It's the fact that our whole family gathered on that couch. Our older children stopped by and sat on it. We watched movies together on it. We argued on it. It's one of our dysfunctional patterns. You could set your watch to it. We would sit in the living room on a Sunday afternoon and spend 2 hours deciding what to do. It would be 4:00 before we reached a decision and then it was too late to do anything. There are other things I miss about the house. The walls leading to the game room. They're filled with the kids' school pictures. I miss the sight of Erin's 1st grade picture. And Shannon's senior picture. And Megan's 2nd grade picture with her hair pulled back.I miss seeing our little neighbor Brandi at our front door. I miss the sound of the dogs running to the back door. I miss seeing Chris come around the corner from his office to the kitchen. But, it's sure not the stuff I miss. Not at all. It's just like I've always heard and it's true. It's just stuff. And home has nothing to do with stuff.
Home is about the unseen. The intangible. The immeasurable. It's about love and warmth and relationships. Thankfully, mold has no power over these. In the end it won't matter what happens to our home with the brown couch and pictures on the walls. Because this is all leading to something much bigger. I take heart, more than ever, in the reality that "what is seen is temporary,but what is unseen is eternal."