Making a House Our Home
Maybe I'd settle down, dig in some roots, find me a farmhouse, find me you... ~~"Weren't For the Wind," Ella Langley~~
Today I cracked the cover of an old, faded photo album.
On the front is--
"Believe in your dreams..."
Inside are photographs of a small cottage, lush green land, and a creek--
Stevens Creek, to be exact. And the...
It's ours, the one we visited then purchased on my birthday--
September 13, 2001.
I was a mere three decades, plus two years!
A babe, in fact, with a pair of boys, one still in diapers.
My resident husband Bill was looking for a place to practice once he finished his year-long fellowship training in Indianapolis.
"Where would you like to live?" Bill had inquired some months earlier.
It was June, and we were traveling westbound I-40, having interviewed in Hendersonville, NC.
"Well, right here looks pretty fine by me," I'd answered, as we entered Haywood County. "After all, I've come to love the mountains of North Carolina."
And it was true.
While Bill and I lived in Greenville, SC for five years during his residency (1996-2001), I would travel there regularly, to hike and poke around.
My favorite spot was Carl Sandburg's historic home where I'd take our boys to pet the goats and play in tall grasses dancing in their farm fields.
(If you haven't been, you really should go.)
Truth is…
I loved touring the Sandburg home.
An aspiring writer, I was enamored by the halls lined with books, Carl Sandburg's writing pens and pencils, not to mention his typewriter.
He was a poet as well as prolific writer of prose--including Abraham Lincoln's biography.
Walking through this house is like entering as friends, only to discover the Sandburgs gone--on a stroll perhaps?
But everything is just so... so...?
So lived in and comfortable, I suppose, like...
And as Bill and I drove that stretch of interstate the summer of 2001, him having asked me where I dreamed of living, I knew.
Because Haywood County, too, felt like...
Home.
Funny thing...
When we lived in SC for that season and I'd drive to my childhood home of Ohio, I'd pass the exit where we now live and think--
Who in their right mind would live here?
I mean, where would they…
Shop?
Go to school?
To church?
But that's where we live...
Have lived for the last twenty-three years...
Today, in fact (but I'm getting ahead of myself).
After that initial visit in September 2001, the day we sat on the cottage's front porch and listened to Stevens Creek sing--
Heard Him whisper—
"Be still and know that I am God... Selah" (Psalm 46:10).
We knew.
This was...
It's why we named it Selah Farm, with hopes that whoever came to visit would enter friends and, should they find us gone (out for a stroll or tending cows, perhaps), they'd sense the sweet presence of God, hear Him say--
"Be still and know."
After purchasing the home in 2001, we made monthly trips to Selah Farm--
Put in our pond.
Built other buildings, including barns.
Basically making this house our...
Home.
Then, on August 1, 2002, we moved from Indiana to western NC.
And here we've stayed.
Yes, here we are...
Through good times and bad..
Gains and losses...
Fair weather and floods...
We've been blessed to truly make--yes, call--Selah Farm...
Home.
Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4).
