What Renting Has Taught Me …

You know I’m a lover of land and open space and farms and fields and long driveways.

And growing up under my dad’s leading, I believe in the value of land.  Of ownership.  Of property and the freedom to do what you’d like with that property.

The thought of belonging to a place and a place belonging to me is strong and settled within my bones.

Which is why I’ve known it to be frustrating curious interesting challenging to have found myself at forty years old (you didn’t forget that number – did you?) having never owned our own home.

I’ve traveled through various seasons of feelings about this truth.  Discontent.  Fine.  Glad to not fix my own broken sink.  Desperate.  Resigned.  Hopeful.

But at the end of all those feelings, I find that I am still not a homeowner.  There’s no chunk of land that belongs to me.  No view that I can claim as mine.  No green grass that I alone can decide to dig up, to plant a garden, to build a chicken coop or to set on fire.

I’ve been a renter my entire life.

The seasons and situations of our life have just dictated this naturally.  It was never a plan – trust me.  (My plan was a farm.  In Virginia.  Of course.  Or an apple orchard.  In Massachusetts.  You know – I’m flexible like that.)  First it was because we were transient college students.  And then it was because we had this lovely gift of living at The Farm.  And then we were camp dwellers.  And now we are new business owners – and banks don’t care to offer house loans to new business owners.

I guess it’s time to accept my fate.

I may one day own a home.  A farm.  Forty acres.

And I may not.

So I must keep my focus –

on the Right Now and the Forever.

Renting isn’t all bad, of course.

I’ve never lived through anything that didn’t offer some lesson for the learning.

And these are those:  

(Lessons, that is.  These are the lessons.  In case I didn’t make that clear.)

1.  If you want to plant it, plant it.  If you want to build it, build it.

(That is, of course, if your landlord consents.)  We’ve been blessed with incredible land owners who have trusted us and granted us wild freedoms in the managing of their properties.  I am continually grateful for that.  In our Virginia home we wanted to plant apple trees.  But we kept thinking – “Well, what if we move soon? Apple trees don’t bear fruit for like five years.”  So we didn’t plant any apple trees.  We lived there ten years.  Without apple trees.

We should have planted those MacIntosh and Stamen apples even if we were backing up the moving truck that very day.

The reason our current home finds us enjoying delectable muscadines every fall is because someone had the foresight to plant those vines.  Someone who no longer resides in this house.  How wonderful that they didn’t put off the planting.  You might enjoy the beauty of what you produce.  You might not.  But the beauty will still exist.  And that is always reason enough to create.

2.  Being a good steward of someone else’s property is Biblical.

I keep telling myself this – even the people who own that charming picket fence and grapevine arch and weeping willow trees hovering over their stream don’t actually own that stream and those trees and that fence.

They are just stewards of the divine.  Care keepers and garden tenders of what is not theirs to keep anyway.

This earth, in all its seeming glory and chaos, is not our possession.

We just tend the little portion assigned to us.  And tend it well.

3.  Beauty does not come from ownership.

Gracious – it’s a good thing it doesn’t.

We can enjoy fine art without hanging it in our home.  (Although I struggle to enjoy it without touching it – the least tiny edge of it – with just my pinkie or something while no one is looking.  Seriously.  This is true.  Ask friends why they find visiting museums difficult with me.)

We can praise another friend’s pottery collection without stuffing cups in our purse.

I can love the shirt you’re wearing without insisting you give it to me.

4.  Do not wait to own land to put down roots.

You might not think you are, but if you are standing still – you are growing roots.  Do not wait for “the next move” or “the bigger house” to invest in where you are right now.  This is the quickest path to regret I know.  (And I’m familiar with some paths to regret.)

I have been lucky enough to live in many homes that I have cherished.  Homes with character and homes with funk.  Quirky married college housing with a living room so tiny that we could change the television stations using our toes while sitting on the sofa.  A home sitting in the center of nearly two hundred acres with a giant stone fireplace as its centerpiece.  A kitchen with chalkboard cabinets.  This old treasure of a house in which we live now – a landing and foyer large enough to do jumping jacks in with the whole family.

I think we’ve left a little of ourselves at each home.  And there’s a small part of each home living in us now too.

I can’t say I wouldn’t do it differently if given the option.  Who can know that?  But the option was never mine and I find myself here, typing in a rented home, surrounded by the beautiful and lovely trinkets of accumulated living and I’m grateful to sit right where I am.

We have a garden planned for this spring.  We strung a zip line through the woods for the kids.  This weekend we buried our sweet golden cat under a red-leafed tree in our yard.

We’re digging in.

I’m trying not to ask, “How long will we live in this house?” and instead I ask, “How well will we live in this house?”  

I think it’s the only question worth asking.