EVERY LITTLE THING

I’ve been waiting for this home to tell me what it wants to be since arriving the day after four surgeons deposited a chemo port in the right side of my chest.

To be fair, this is the first time in the forty-one years I’ve been renovating homes that something more pressing was occupying my headspace.

I take my work, creating places that manifest their people, very seriously. In fact, in many ways the spaces we inhabit are, like that little port imbedded in me, our lifelines.

In saying this, there is something I need to confess—that is, as far as homes go this is architecturally the homeliest dwelling we’ve ever owned—

It must also be said that it has been, in all ways, my medicine.

It was late afternoon on the last day of our visit to Coeur d’Alene when I first set eyes on this 1942 cottage overlooking the lake. We had sold our home in Napa and felt powerfully led to leave California behind—This was before the mass exodus. Before the housing prices soared. Before I knew I had cancer.

I would like to tell you it was the original worn maple floors that captivated me, or the sweeping views of the lake that pushed me over the edge. 

I found it curious that the single feature that compelled me to make this neglected former Airbnb mine was...forks in the drawer.

As we walked through each room, I felt this inexplicable peace that everything was already in place for what was coming, though I knew nothing of what that was to be.

The week we returned to Napa from buying our new sanctuary, the unexpected call came. Within five days I had endured two extensive surgeries. Ten days later I boarded a plane with bruising from the top of my neck to my belly button from my port surgery the day before. Over ten hours I carried luggage through airports, and breathed through a mask through multiple weather delays.

I share all of that…to tell you this—

When I arrived at my new home the beds were freshly made. The lamps were lit. Knives, forks, and spoons were nested in the drawer.

Not one box needed to be unpacked. I simply took a shower and crawled into bed.

Nothing about the structure or interior, was “my taste.”  But I knew without question this home was intended...prepared...just for me. 

God gives us the desires of our hearts—you’ve heard this so many times before.

It doesn’t mean he spoils or pacifies us. It means he imbeds us with a passion to seek after what is best for us. 

May I tell you that my overarching, unrelenting desire for forks in the drawer was not some silly notion but tangible, God-sized evidence that the Creator of everything delights in giving us exactly what we need.

What do you need right now?
Not what the world says you should have, or even what you think you want,
what do you need? 

It has taken two years for  me to feel a vision for this little cottage flowing back through me,  like chemotherapy and high dose vitamin c.  Through the waiting, God was—

~reorganizing my priorities
~teaching me to value something different, something ‘other'
~cultivating my ability to hear His voice through the promptings born in me
~expanding my patience, developing a long view
~revealing treasure in the things that once appeared pedestrian

Clean sheets. Pillows. Sunset views. 

Anticipate God will speak to you in the little things.

Awaken to the truth that He knows what’s coming and what will sustain you.

In every home there dwells this marvelous potential to become a Sanctuary—

Not in remodeling walls or doors or windows, but through the transformation that begins in me.