goin' to the chapel

When one spends 11 hours in the car on the highway, one sees many things, and some of those invariably serve as reminders of some past long forgotten. Yesterday, I had one such moment.....

Along the way, somewhere just past halfway to our destination, I spied a deserted church off the highway. It reminded me of a long ago dream of ours (mine?) to one day buy an old church and renovate it as our home. At the time, we lived in New England, where churches for sale would not have seemed all that unusual. Especially the size that would seem reasonable as a single family dwelling. We also did not yet have children, so the idea of renovating, refurbishing and remodelling did not feel overwhelmingly impossible! (Now, just trying to organize a time to purchase the paint for the balcony project--let alone pick out a color!-- takes a crazy amount of logistical madness!)

Seeing that church, though, with weeds growing up around it, and the driveway/parking lot breaking up with them, the excitement of the prospect flowered and bloomed again in my mind. For the next 50 miles or so, I mused about the little churches we had spied off the beaten track on the travels of our early days together. I remembered my sister-in-law saying that we always had the greatest creative ideas for everything. I wondered if I had ever shared that statement with my husband, and how he might have taken it.....

The loft bedroom in the choir loft; the two bedrooms off either side of what had once been the altar area; the open concept living room, dining room, fun area in the body of the church, where the main aisle and pews had been. It all came back.

And I wondered.....was it really such a far-fetched idea? I had completely forgotten about it, and the memory stirred something joyous in me. Do I see it as a calling? I don't know. Do I see it as a symbol of renewed faith? Again, I don't know. Honestly, I see it as a recollection of a dream. I see it as another rebirth of the joys of our life. Another symbol of the strong foundation we have built together paying off when the storms come. Most of all, I see it as a reminder to smile joyfully as I look both backward and forward on who I am, what we have together, and where we are headed--literally and figuratively.