on shapes …… of houses and lives
On the way to soccer practice we drive through a tidy neighborhood.
It’s cute. Full of squares. Lots of squares. Square houses. Square screened-in back porches. Square lawns. Manicured lawns. Lawns with the grass cut at an angle and a criss-cross pattern that just politely declares tidy.
Men younger than me are standing in their garages, near their garages, in their driveways in front of their garages. In front of their tidy square garages. Garages lined across the back with rectangular shelves housing square storage containers stacked high and in order, full of the organized stuff of their organized lives. Stuff they Don’t Need Right Now. Christmas decorations. Autumn decorations. It even looks color-coded.
I’m not quite old enough to be the mother of these nameless dudes who own these perfect squares, but I am definitely not a peer either.
I just don’t get it.
Will my own life ever look this tidy?
Did I read the wrong instructions manual? Roll the dice and choose the wrong path to my own game of Life? Am I just driving around in the wrong direction in my plastic green car with my pink and blue plastic pegs dotting the backseat?
I am forty-four years old and I have never owned my own home – not a square one nor a rectangle one nor a round one.
I can’t seem to find a house to purchase to save my life and the rectangles of my current lawn, shoot – of my entire life – keep losing their shape. My squares won’t stay stacked and the colors aren’t even primary – they’re some sort of brownish black grayish blend you get when you just mix all the colors together at one time.
Where is my tidy square?
Who will teach me to mow my grass in two separate directions to create a pretty pattern?
____________________________________
10 Comments
Helen
I will hopefully soon have a house to sell. But you would have to move back to the mountains of Va. Just saying….
laceykeigley
Ah – the mountains of Virginia.
Crystal
Ok, so I for sure agree with these above ladies! Very true. But not on a deep level and in comment to your last sentence…I too have always wanted that – it’s so neat looking! I’m not a professional, as you know, so I’m sure there are other ways, but my easy way is just to go horizontal one week, vertical the next week, diagonal the next, and the other diagonal the next, and then back to the beginning. Again, it’s not perfect but it gets a pretty neat look and all I have to remember is which way I mowed the week before. 😉
laceykeigley
🙂
Heidi Smid
“Little boxes on a hillside” – an oldies song – comes to mind.
God has not put you into a square box, Lacey. It might look and feel safe, as though there’s nothing untoward or unpleasant going on inside those perfect squares. But pain and sin and mess live in every life, in every heart, in every relationship, even inside those tidy homes. You are held firmly and lovingly in God’s eternal and loving hand. The shape of His hand is infinitely more perfect than all the manicured lawns and immaculate garages on the planet.
laceykeigley
I know that song!
Thank you for these kind words.
Sara
I used to unknowingly strive towards the boxes, the look of perfection. You know this. You also know that through heartache and brokenness, I no longer fit in many of my own carefully crafted boxes.
We have a book we give to children when they leave our home. You know this stuff but we all need reminders when we see what appears to be others who “have arrived.”
“You, you, when God made you,,
God made you all shiny and new..
An exclusive design, one God refined,
You’re a perfectly crafted, one of a kind….
You, you, when God sees you,
God delights in what is and sees only what’s true.
That you-yes, you- in all of your glory,
Bring color and rhythm and rhyme to God’s story.
So be you-fully you-
A show stopping revue.
Live your life in full color,
Every tint, every hue.
Discover. Explore!
Have faith but love more.
And learn and relearn all
That God made you for.
Use your talents and passions,
Those gifts that God fashioned.
Think up ideas and then put them to action….”
-When God Made You
You daily live out the truth of those words, Lacey. Don’t be confused by and pulled into the “Christian American dream.” It does not and never will define your success. You already are success in its truest defining: You love well and are much loved.
I am-ever and always-a fan of yours, desiring to learn to be as open hearted and creative as all your friends know you to be.
Sandy
Such precious words Sara!!!!
laceykeigley
Oh goodness Sandy – how you would love Sara …..
laceykeigley
I always value your words.