Providence and the "pasture house"

When I moved my family to the Atlanta area in 2003, God blessed us with a Christian school where all four of our children could attend and my wife could teach. We decided that we would look for a house in the vicinity of the school rather than near my workplace in Suwanee, about 20 miles east. Sure, we knew I'd have a long commute, but I can redeem time in the car by myself; that wouldn't have been possible for my wife with four kids along.

We instinctively liked the area of the school. It's near Cumming in Forsyth County, on the northern fringes of Atlanta and almost within sight of the North Georgia mountains. Both Kathy and I grew up in rural areas and treasured that experience, but throughout our adult lives we have found ourselves living in gradually larger metro areas--we moved from Richmond, Va., to Orlando, Fla., to the Atlanta area--and we have gradually become more "citified." We thought moving to Forsyth, with its piney woods and gently rolling pastures, would be a step backward toward our roots. We're not agrarians and we weren't looking for a farm, but we felt that being able to drive by cows and hay bales would be quite nice after living in the suburbian wastes of Orlando.

However, almost as soon as we began the house search process, we got quite excited, because it appeared our Realtor had found us something far more special than a functional house. We were still in Orlando making preparations for our move when she sent pictures of a house we instantly liked. It was in a quiet subdivision, but it was located at the end of a dead-end street adjacent to a pasture, across which there was a stunning view of Sawnee Mountain, our local landmark. The house was the right size and was in our price range, and the pictures the Realtor emailed made it seem ideal. We couldn't wait to see it. Here's a pic of the pasture and Sawnee Mountain.

Of course, it WAS good, for which reason some other buyer put a contract on it before we got to Atlanta to take a look at it.

The positive upshot of that whole deal was that the "pasture house," as we called it, was in a neighborhood we liked a lot. There we found another house, located on an interior cul-de-sac, that was just right. And there we've been for two-plus years now.

However, I pined for a while over the loss of my vision of sitting on a deck and gazing out across a pasture toward Sawnee Mountain on a misty morning while sipping that first cup of coffee. And then my wife said a very prescient thing. The day will come, she predicted, that that dead-end street will be extended into that pasture and the folks in the "pasture house" will see the countryside ripped up for new homes.

Well, in the two-plus years we've been here, Atlanta has arrived. The two-lane road that runs by our subdivision has been marked by "For sale" and rezoning signs by the score. We estimate that about two thousand new homes are going in along a five-mile stretch. One of those new subdivisions is to the west, just across the road from the entrance to our neighborhood. To the south, a new high school is being built. And to the north, where lies my pretty pasture, a neighborhood of expensive homes is planned, just as Kathy predicted.

Today, as I walked around the neighborhood in an effort to lose an ounce or two of Christmas fat, I heard the news, oh boy. It was the sound of heavy machinery. Yes, the pasture's days are past. Earth is being moved.

I hate to see the pasture go. I will miss hearing the cows lowing on those mornings when I walked out to get my paper and the wind was just right. But how thankful I am now that kind Providence did not let me buy a house where I would have had to sit on my deck and gaze across a muddy swath of earth while bulldozers rumble by in the misty morning. How thankful I am that I do not have to dwell in the land of hammers and circular saws. How thankful I am that I do not have to dread the day when Sawnee Mountain will be concealed behind someone's roof. Praise the God of real estate contracts.

GtG

Out of the quiet, equilibrium

I'm spending a quiet morning at home today, wrapping up a week off with a final holiday. I've been addressing a few editing tasks this morning, including putting the finishing touches on one big job and starting a sample edit on another. This afternoon I'll switch on the Gator Bowl game, matching my Virginia Tech Hokies against the Louisville Cardinals, and after that I'll head down to my kids' Christian school to watch my sons play basketball (Ben on the JV team and Nathan on the varsity).

But for now it's especially quiet here because my wife and three of the kids are back at school today, while the fourth, our youngest, is sleeping off an upset stomach upstairs. I haven't put on any music (current favorite: the Moviola channel on www.Live365.com) so I'll be sure to hear my daughter if she calls. All I can hear is the sound of raindrops in the downspout just outside my basement office and the soft whirring of the computer.

Everything about this kind of morning appeals to me. I never mind being by myself; I like solitude and often have to push myself to be sociable. I like being in my home office. And I like the clear-cut requirements of my editing business: I know what I need to do this morning, and nothing else is clamoring for my attention. In short, I feel as if I'm in a bubble of contentment.

Yes, I know the quiet won't endure. My daughter might wake up crying. Another thunderstorm, like the ones we had last night, might rumble through (and I think I just heard thunder). A phone call might bring some unexpected crisis. But I'm thankful for these precious few hours this morning, a chance to relax, think, and catch my breath before life gets back into its normal routine.

If there's one thing I need to do this year, it is to find a way, with God's help, to keep that bubble of contentment intact through all the ups and downs, twists and turns, of a normal day. I'm much too quick to let my circumstances dictate my mood. I need greater equilibrium.

I see again the need to set aside a "quiet time" at the beginning of each day, a time in which to seek God and re-establish my equilibrium by turning my cares over to Him and by turning to His Word to be reminded of the great truths that govern my life. I'm pretty good at gaining the quiet time; I get up well before the rest of my family. But I don't always use that time wisely.

So that little window of time was on my mind as I made my New Year's resolutions. I'm starting another systematic read through the Bible. And I'm going to try something I haven't done before: slowly studying through a book (Philippians) with the help of a commentary (James Montgomery Boice), slowly digesting. I think the exercise itself will be good for me, and Paul's emphasis on joy is something I need to absorb. Finally, I've written out a list of specific prayer needs, and plan to use it each morning.

Basic stuff, I know. I'm just getting back on the bicycle one more time, as I have been doing for years and will be doing for the rest of my life. Hopefully, writing about it here will be an extra motivation for me to keep at it.

Looking for greater equilibrium? I recommend starting each day in the quiet before the throne of grace.