The Old Home Is Gone but Not the Memories

Gardenia blossoms: Forever the smell of the old homestead

I looked in the dark as I drove by, but I couldn't tell anything.  My grandparents' old home, long empty, had been torn down.  The darkness allowed a few more hours of memories of the way the old house looked during my childhood.  The next day, however, I saw the reality: only a few remnants of the first house on the left of Ainsworth Road in Star, Mississippi.

A few months ago, I wrote about a black rubber "WELCOME" mat that belonged to my grandparents. It continues to serve as a reminder of my grandparents who lived just two houses away during my childhood.  A childhood flush with good memories.  Daily visits with my grandparents.  The ritual flipping of the welcome mat.  Pop's place on the front porch.  Granny's place.  Dogwood blossoms gathered because they were Granny's favorite.  The smell of gardenia blossoms.  Cokes drunk from our special cups.  (Those cups were still in the cabinets a couple of years ago when I last walked through the old house; they seemed so tiny.  Amazing how far a 32-ounce Coke used to go.)  I could write a whole post on the Cokes alone; perhaps I will one day.

Dad told me this weekend that it had been 25 years ago that my grandfather passed away.  I can still remember Pop's playing catch with me with that old-timey puffy, flat baseball glove.  Oh, do I wish I had that glove.  I remember his driving lessons in his baby blue Mercury Capri.  Actually, I won't forget because I ran over the hedges in front of the volunteer fire department, and my sisters and brother remind me of it every so often.  The old house may be gone, but the memories linger.

The older I get, the more I realize that my treasured childhood memories are far from the norm.  I hear so many stories of childhood abuse and neglect, and it breaks my heart, especially since people tend to repeat as adults whatever their childhood looked like.  As a pastor I get the privilege of watching the Lord bind up the brokenhearted, redeeming scars of childhood wounds and making people new.  Spiritually, I am -- in the words of Psalm 70:5 -- "poor and needy" like everyone else apart from Christ, but I am aware that the baggage I carry from my past is light. For many, perhaps even most, their baggage is not light.  It is certainly not light for the world's 140 million-plus orphans.

I will be in Haiti in a little over a week, serving kids whose childhoods do not mirror mine at all.  A win for our team will be if years from now, those kids look back at the week they spent with us and say, "Remember that time that team from Mississippi came?  Remember how we drew on every square inch of concrete with the chalk they brought us?  Remember how they colored with us and jumped rope with us and played ball with us?  Remember how they taught us to play corn hole and left the game with us?  Remember how they let us see every single photo on their phones even though we had seen them a dozen times already?  Remember how they couldn't say anything in Haitian Creole, but that didn't stop them from trying?  Remember that crazy guy shouting, "Viva, de Crayola!" when we were coloring?  Remember how much they loved Jesus?

Even a year from now, those memories will come from a new house.  They will realize -- as I have -- that memories may be associated with houses, but they don't contain them.

Yeah, I remember...

Thanks for reading.

4theVoiceless,
Al