When I’m an old woman, I really shall wear purple. But I won’t actually wait until I’m old to wear it.

And when I’m an old woman, I shall not really know that I’m old. But I shall think myself quite young.

And I’ll cry easily at the Hallmark card stand, and laugh loudly with a friend at Panera, and wear gaudy jewelry, and sing at the top of my lungs in that old wooden pew, and from time to time, I shall embarrass my children.

And maybe even embarrass myself.

When I’m an old woman, I shall wear my life on my skin. I shall see each wrinkle as a badge earned, and each scar as a storm weathered. I’ll not live with a series of regrets and “I-Wish-I’ds.”

When I’m an old woman, I shall remember the glad days of tiny hand-prints on windows and carpet picnics and dandelion bouquets and rocks in their pockets and chubby fingers and “Goodnight Moon.”

But I shall not stop holding hands or singing lullabies or stringing words or telling stories or believing in fairy tales.

When I’m an old woman, I shall lay on my back, counting stars. And Lord, I pray that my favorite farmer will be sprawled on the grass next to me. And that we’ll hold hands. And that we’ll laugh because we’re not sure how to get back up again.

When I’m an old woman, I shall still weep the happiest tears over the ways I’ve been wildly loved and utterly cherished by a King, despite all the dumb things I did, the stupid things I said or the ridiculous notions that I thought.

When I’m an old woman, I shall still be a child. And I shall still like getting presents.  And I will know that the best gift I ever got, hands-down, was Jesus Himself. 

When I’m an old woman, I shall — at last — know what Robert Frost meant when he wrote, “the afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” And I will still want to learn more about myself, and who I am becoming.

I will not be afraid of the night.

And I shall never stop learning or loving or laboring or laughing until that day, when they lay me down, face up toward the sky, with my eyes and heart pointed toward heaven.

And that’s when this woman — be she young or old — that’s when she shall know by sight, what she had come to believe by faith.

{Photos of a few of my dearest “in-real-life” Jesus-sisters, as we celebrated the 50th birthday of our very good friend, Renae.}

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Live in this moment.
Wring every drop of glory you can out of your life.
Make each day a John 10:10 kind of day.

(I might have even over-used exclamation points.)

I wrote words like that on my Facebook page yesterday:

Almost immediately, my Facebook page blinked with a woman’s anguished response: “What do you do when you just experienced the worst day if your life??”

My heart dropped into my stomach.

Because really, some days don’t feel worth repeating. In the middle of the brutal days, you’d never dream of DVR’ing them. And if you bought the re-runs off the rack at Target, you’d demand a refund.

Some days, you just want to erase the whole thing, hide under the covers and pretend that the day (or the years) never happened.

I held the iPhone in my hand, reading the woman’s words. A lump rose up in my throat. My mind did some mental gymnastics: what pain unleashed itself on her life? 

And right then, I remembered some my worst moments that would be hard to watch on the playback — seasons of betrayal, grief, that out-of-control feeling that makes your anxiety-seized heart race so fast you think it will sprint straight out of your chest.

What do you do, the woman asked, on the worst day of your life?

My hands cradled my iPhone, and at first, a dozen pat answers flooded my mind. I had a bullet-point list ready for her. Had a few Bible verses in mind and everything. I could have tapped them out, like a good Christian robot. I mean, she was looking for a little hope right? A little advice from a friend on the other side of the computer screen?  And wasn’t I supposed to have some answers here?

But this is what I did instead. I told her the truth. Because when my world crashes down, this is what I do: 

“I crumble.” 

Those are the weak words I typed into the comment box. Because those are the truest words. My default response is to fall completely apart. I do not do “worst days” well. I am a broken, weepy mess.

A few months ago, we suffered a private heartache here that kept me awake long hours, night after night. I didn’t want to get out of bed. And when I did, morning after morning, my eyes were puffy. I had something akin to an anxiety attack several times, where my throat tightened, and I didn’t know if I could breathe. And my husband, he would text me throughout the day from the farm office, just to let me know God’s got it.

Each of those days, broken as I was, I came to this place, and these keys. I wrote anyway — not about the details of something very painful and private. But of hope. I wrote about hope. Not of a false hope, or a detached theological concept, or a two-dimensional Savior figure who could, in theory, save us all from the mess we’re in down here.

Any word of hope that I’ve ever written in this place? Its roots are sunk deep into the rescue of the only real hope that this world has ever known. Jesus Christ is real, people, and He actually loves us. <—– That’s the only thing I know for sure. It’s simple, and true, and utterly life-changing.

Truth be told, I’m most malleable in the posture of the crumble. The seasons of pain have been the opening places for seeing God.  No, I don’t do “worst days” well. But God does.

So, then, how does a person get through her very worst day?

She simply falls down.

In my weakest, I fall head-first and heart-first into my Strong.

And maybe, someday, I’ll wish I could have DVR’d it after all. Maybe then, on the playback, I’ll see all what I could not have seen in my pain-blinded state–

How, in that moment when I didn’t think I could breathe, He was right beside me, exhaling life into my crumbled, crumpled soul.

(Thank you, Jesus.)

So Dad’s here on the farm again.

Which means that his grass-stained New Balance shoes are pushed up along that jagged shoreline of footwear in the mudroom. His enormous shoes are like these two canoes anchored next to the girls’ flip-flops. Even my shoes look small, moored next to his boats.

Dad’s always been bigger than life like that to me.

I can’t see him as anything other than the man I walked with every Sunday as a little girl to church. I took two steps for every one of his. We always held hands on the way to the church, Dad and I.

I can’t imagine him ever NOT being here. You know what I mean?

Yeah. You know. You’re mortal, too. You don’t want your people to ever die.

Dad comes to the farm every spring now, and again every fall.

He first showed up to work on the farm a few seasons ago.

He came to fill an empty tractor seat. The seat used to belong to my husband’s father. But a few months after the last grain-wagons were emptied in 2008, my father-in-law passed away. The cancer spread fast.

His last orders to his son, before he left for the hospice house, were scratched on a scrap of paper: “Scott needs a hired man.”

Now, we playfully call my dad “The Hired Man.” Maybe it’s a way of being sure that each of us remembers whose request we’re honoring here. I type out notes to the Hired Man in the “Hired Man’s Quarters.”

I hope I get to write these notes to the Hired Man for years, but we never really know about these things, do we? A few months ago, doctors said Dad had a “close call” with his heart.

He has a pacemaker now. Dad said he’s feeling a bit lucky to be here this spring.

I don’t know if I’ve ever appreciated those New Balance shoes by my door more than I do this spring.

We’re all born and raised in this lap of uncertainty. Or maybe this is the lap of God. If we’re honest, most of us have been known to confuse the two laps.

Maybe that’s what C.S. Lewis meant when he said: ““We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

Life on Earth is painful. And it’s utterly splendid.

Life is a daily jumble of agony and rejoicing. Scroll down your Facebook feed if you don’t believe me. Look what’s happening to your friends, to your world.

This week, someone I know died much too early, at age 25. I weep.

But this! Two friends are winging their way to Haiti to meet their baby, Gracie.

Over the weekend, I hugged my Mom, who’s in her seventies. On the flipside, a mother I know grieved the anniversary of her child’s death.

And of course this: We rejoice over the freed captives, but anguish over anyone who could commit evil for ten years, undetected, right in the middle of the neighborhood. 

The world is a hard place to live, and it’s an astonishingly lovely place to live.

Pardon me for the cliche, but the cliche is true and repeatable–

We don’t know what tomorrow holds. So we’ve simply got to trust the one Who holds tomorrow. Call me simple-minded — I probably am — but I believe that Someone Else has. it. under. control, even when every ounce of life appears out of control.

I throw my hands up in the air a lot of times. I do. I ask God to help me navigate the agony, to trust Him in the sorrow. But I also thank Him in those blissful moments, and utterly praise Him for his forever love.

Tonight, I went to the mudroom to straighten shoes on that footwear-shore.

And there they were: those grass-stained New Balance tennis shoes — those canoes by the door —  making my mind stay fixed to the truth.

Two grass-stained shoes — bigger than life — felt like an anchor.

During 2013, dozens of talented writers are joining me to cheer you on in your storytelling. These guest-writers will share a few helpful words with you right here every Tuesday night, to encourage you as you #TellHisStory. (Come back after midnight Wednesday to link up your God Story by clicking here. You are free to share ANY story that God lays on your heart.)

And now, I’m delighted to introduce you to my good friend and a very talented author, Michelle DeRusha.

Tell the Truth as You Understand It

I keep a quote by writer Anne Lamott front and center on my desk that says this:

“Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it.”

I’ve probably re-read that quote 400 times. I read it when I’m afraid, when I want to write the easy way out of a story.

Every time I’m inclined to sugarcoat a story, or avoid one altogether, I know it’s because I am afraid. Because I want people to like me rather than really know me. Because I want them to see a more perfect version of the real me. Because I am ashamed of my flaws and my ugly.

When I re-read Anne Lamott’s quote, I’m reminded for the umpteenth time that we all need to read real stories because they are universal, and because they tell us something about ourselves that we might not know, or that we might be avoiding, or that we might need to celebrate and love, rather than hide.

And so I begin again, to tell the truth as I understand it.

Michelle’s first two books – 50 Women Every Christian Should Know (Baker Books) andSpiritual Misfit: A Memoir of Doubt and Faith (WaterBrook Multnomah) – will be published in 2014. You can read Michelle’s blog here, and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

YOUR TURN: Have you experienced a time when you “risked being unliked” for the sake of telling a story that needed to be told? How hard is it to be vulnerable in your stories? And can people go too far?

The gymnasium chairs will be hard, and the room will be too warm, and you’ll be readjusting the bobby-pins on your graduation cap. But pay attention, young lady. An older, seasoned version of yourself has the microphone up front right now, and she has a few things she wants you to know before you put that graduation gown back on the hanger.

Listen up.

1 – Make plans, young graduate. Make audacious plans that scare you. But don’t have a freak attack when the world chews up your plans and spits them onto the stained carpet of your first apartment. Because even when you outline your goals on a yellow legal pad, life has a way of making plans of its own.

2 — Develop a spirit of gratitude. Start by thanking your parents. They knew more than you gave them credit for. Mark Twain said it like this: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

3 — Be serious about your work, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Life can be really funny. And so can you, if you’d loosen up a bit. Job interviews and first dates aren’t Irish wakes, for heaven’s sake. Go ahead, laugh at your silly self.

4 — It doesn’t have to be big to be good. Don’t be afraid to be small, or to pay attention to the little things, like you did when you a girl, out by the ladybug tree and the anthills. Tiny moments are proof that God has it all under control. There’s magic in the miniscule.

5 — Success doesn’t always wear a three-piece suit. (It might, but it doesn’t always.) So don’t be shocked when you find out that success wears yoga pants and wakes up for 3 a.m. feedings.

6 – Don’t look over the shoulder of the person in front of you. Yes,  I know, there are people in the room with important titles. I know you’ll be itching to get your face in front of them. But don’t get so eager to scratch that itch that you miss the beauty right here. Can you see their faces yet? (Hint: They might look like your very own children.)

7 – Don’t stop learning. Retain your sense of awe. Read poetry that you don’t understand. Pick up books about stars, or gravity, or the germination of seeds. Take a class that scares you. Wonder why. And wander awhile.

8 – Yes, there really is such a thing as a dumb question. Ask it anyway. Spoiler alert — You’re going to be a news reporter, just like you dreamed, and trust me: The best stories will come in those moments when you were brave enough to look stupid.

9 – Failure is a gift. Unwrap it, because there’s a lesson on the inside.

10 - I want to warn you about something. You’ll face intense loneliness in this life. And it will feel like it’s going to last forever, like the world yawned open to swallow you whole. But hold on tight, because God is going to send a friend to you, and she will remind you a lot of Jesus. It will change the way you love others.

11 - Know what your commencement really means. You’ll have a nephew who will graduate in May of 2013, and while he’s zipping up his  gown in the front yard, your own dad will be there, watching his grandson. And your dad will tell you how when he was a kid, he thought the word “commencement” meant “the end,” because the commencement ceremony capped thirteen years of schooling. It wasn’t until your dad was a teenager that he learned that the word commencement means “beginning.”

And young lady? This is one in a serious of new beginnings. I don’t want to tell you too much, because that would spoil the adventure of your life, but a few doors will slam shut in your face. And it will look like a sad ending. But be thankful for the closed door, for it will make you turn around and find the one standing open for you. Walk through slowly, though, young lady. You don’t need to run or rush.

Always, always, be all here.
(And I’ll be waiting there.)

Love,
Me

(Photo by rkleine. Sourced via Creative Commons on Flickr.)

My daughter, Lydia, drums her fingers on the breakfast bar, while her neglected oatmeal hardens on the edge of the bowl.

“I’ve got it!” She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, declaring that she has found the perfect name for the newest member of our family. “Herbert! Yes, that’s it!”

I lower my eyebrows and twist my mouth into a crooked knot. “Herbert? Really?”

He should arrive this week, just in time for Mother’s Day. The bottles have been purchased. The nursery has been lined with straw. And when we get a phone call from a farmer across the county line, we’ll drive along gravel roads to fetch the newest addition to the farm: a newborn calf.

I spread grape jelly on wheat, and while I would prefer a name other than Herbert, I silently thank the good Lord that my daughter has scratched one name off the list of contenders: Sir Loin.

She’s still drumming fingers, staring off into that mystical space where she fetches daydreams. I pick up her spoon and put it between her fingers. “Eat your oatmeal, dear.”

She punctuates the air with her spoon, making it official. She lets the name roll off her tongue one more time: “Herbert. But if it’s a girl? Sherbert.”

For all practical purposes, Lydia will be the surrogate mother of a new calf. She will bottle-feed it, maintain its home, and train it to walk with a halter. By July, our girl will lead her calf by a rope around the show-ring of the county fair. She is hoping for a blue ribbon.

I watch her, while resting my chin on my knuckles. She stirs her oatmeal with one hand, and with the other, she shuffles papers printed off the Internet. She keeps her documents organized in a manila file, which she decorated with a crayon drawing of a calf. This stack of papers is, I think, a sort of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” for a first-time calf mother.

A casual observer might assume that, because she’s a farmer’s daughter, she would know how to care for a calf. But, no. We don’t raise cattle on this farm. So she studies. Watching her, I remember how I did the same thing when my belly was swollen with her, my firstborn. People assumed I knew how to be a mom, solely because I was female. Experienced mothers told me to stop worrying. They said my body would do the work, and that once the baby arrived, I would instinctively know what to do.

But I’ve never felt instinctive about anything. Until it happened, I knew none of it: the labor pains, the contractions, the way your own child’s first cry can make your arms ache, or how the whole planet stops spinning when a nurse hands you your baby.

All of it has felt new. Even now. Much of it has struck me, all at once, as scary and invigorating. Yes, motherhood is a ride down a hill without training wheels. It’s “Look-no-hands!” It’s a child’s first step into a giant yellow school bus. It’s a trip through the surgery door, and it’s a box of Band-aids. It’s your own silly songs, and it’s that wet cheek pressed into your shoulder at Grandpa’s funeral.

There’s no book for any of that.

I’m thinking of the truth about these things as I watch her, this daughter of mine, falling in love with another living creature that isn’t even born yet. Being a mom, it’s risky. Nothing is quite what you’ve planned. But quite often, it’s a whole lot more than you dreamed.

Just then, Lydia’s dad pokes his head in the kitchen door with the news. Herbert has been born. And, surprise: so has Sherbert.

We’ll buy another bottle, and tomorrow morning, we’ll bring those babies home.

Or maybe they’re more like diamonds strung on a necklace, dangling over our roof and our farmfields.

It’s spring now, and the nights seem clearer, the stars brighter.

So my oldest daughter and I lie on her bed, on the inside of the glass, with the lamp off. We curve into one another, watching stars perform some magic — making this dark universe a little bit brighter.

It’s a school night, and we stay up far too late talking about how those  impossibly small stars can cut a million holes over our farm, and over our neighbors up the road, and even way down over our friends’ huts in Haiti.

We talk about other stars, too. We talk about the “people stars” — especially the ones who want to be supernovas with microphones, light-years ahead of the competition. They are the ones who are heard and known and noisy. They are winning the game and making the name and getting the fame.

And the rest of us? We might be tempted to sit in the bleachers with stars in our eyes.

Outside the window, we can hear two farm cats hiss in a late-night squabble under the stars.

“You know,” I tell my girl, “we really are like stars, and we really are made to shine. But we weren’t made to shine so we can be seen better, Lydia. We were made to shine so others can see God better.”

Lydia nods. She’s 11, still young enough to listen to her mother when I yank an object-lesson down from the night sky.

I pull Lydia in tighter, and tell her about the book I’d been reading, the book about idols that battle for a person’s heart. I told her how idols can dress up in clever disguises, wearing virtues we value in our home. Virtues like having goals, working hard, doing your best.

Yes, daughter, success can be an idol. 

Even when you’re a kid, the idol of success can begin to make you think that “doing your best” really means “being THE best.”  The allure of prestige and power and awards carries far too much value. (You don’t have to look far past the soccer field or the spelling-bee stage to see that.)

And I see them there … two of Lydia’s speech trophies sitting next to the glass, on her windowsill.

And my, how proud we are of her.

But we pray she doesn’t keep score of her own life by her trophies, or the number of visitors she gets to her blog.

On this night, I don’t tell my daughter what I did months ago. I turned off the technical-thingy that tracks how many visitors come to my blog. I’ll tell her someday, when the time is right. (And I don’t tell you that here now, because I’m feeling proud or super-righteous. Nor do I think every blogger should shut down their stat-counter. I tell you only because I admit that my emotions can be manipulated by numbers. Someday, I’ll tell you more about that. )

On this night, I do tell Lydia about the book I’m reading. In “Gods at War,” Kyle Idleman quotes a study that examined the predominant message of TV shows that are most popular these days with preteens. The TV show message of this age: “a successful life is all about finding a way to be famous.”

While my girl and I star-gaze, I ask her if she thinks the book is right about all of that.

“Oh yeah. For sure, Mom,” she says, then counts off the TV shows on her fingers–

• A teenager who is the star of her own web show.
• A girl who lives a double life — “normal” by day but a famous pop-star by night.
• A small-town Texas girl who moves to the Big Apple to become a nanny for the children of a high-profile couple.
• Two girls who star as background dancers on a local show.

Outside the window, those luminous stars shine like fireflies.

And right then, I’m thinking about stepping up on a soapbox, telling Lydia more about how stars don’t exist for their own glory. They point to a Creator. And they always light up something else. She’ll know it — sure as daylight in the morning — when our own star rises over the eastern horizon…

I stay off the soapbox. It’s late, and I suppose she knows more than I’m giving her credit for anyway.

We pray instead.

Then I lift myself from the bed, up into the darkness toward the door. But before I leave the room, she wants to tell me something.

“Mom?” she says.

I’m standing in the starlight by the window.

“Mom, I do know what the Bible says. I do know why we’re really made to shine.”

Right then, I can feel a lump rising up in my throat, and my voice catches:

“I know you do, honey. I know you do. I love you, dear.”

Then I pull a white cord to close the blinds.

Photo credits: (1) (2) (3) Sourced via Flickr, through Creative Commons.

During 2013, dozens of talented writers are joining me to cheer you on in your storytelling. These guest-writers will share a few helpful words with you right here every Tuesday night, to encourage you as you #TellHisStory. (Come back after midnight Wednesday to link up your God Story by clicking here. You are free to share ANY story that God lays on your heart.)

And now, I’m delighted to introduce you to my writer friend, Cara Sexton.

Writing is the act of deliberate re-living, unraveling each moment until it is threadbare, then winding it back up again slowly, noticing the sound of the string and the taste of the air.

Chew on your words long and slow, and roll them around your teeth. Become familiar with them, have your fill.

Write first for you…to understand, to see things differently, to find God in this. In the re-telling live the experience more presently than the first time, in slow motion. Notice what you didn’t see before: the assembly line of ants on the windowsill, the frayed ends of his shoelaces, the abandoned slingshot lying in the dirt.

Find the universal truth at hand, the impossible beauty of the thorn bush, and lay it on the altar as offering in the same bowed posture as you submit your very self. Writing is worship.

The challenge is remaining close enough to your work that it is an extension of your very breath but far enough removed to detach yourself when the growing is done and it’s time to push it out of the nest and see if it can fly.

Cara is a mom of four living in Ashland, Oregon, where she writes, creates, decorates, studies, reads, blogs, and dreams ridiculous dreams with the support of her awesome and hilarious family. Her book, Soul Bare: Reflections on Becoming Human (featuring a piece by Jennifer Lee) is releasing this spring by Civitas Press.

Find her at: 

Blog: www.WhimsySmitten.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/WhimsySmitten

Twitter: www.twitter.com/whimsysmitten

YOUR TURN: Tell about a time when you experienced what Cara calls “writing as worship.”

This is the letter I would have written to you eleven years ago, when you started framing up the walls of our home, if I knew then what I know now.

Remember how I fussed over whether to lay tile or wood floors, whether to paint the kitchen that dark Georgia brick, or one shade lighter? We talked a long time about room dimensions, and light fixtures. Birch versus maple. All that.

Mr. House-Builder, We love our house, and we thank you for your good work, but everything you’ve done is starting to show its age. That’s not your fault. Like the Good Book says, moths and rust will soon destroy.

These wood floors are scratched now. I dropped a mayonnaise jar on that floor one Thanksgiving Day, leaving a deep groove by the refrigerator. The walls are in serious need of a paint touch-up.

We live on a farm, after all, not in the Louvre. We have actual people living here, not mannequins.

We had to replace the oil-bronzed knob on the backdoor this winter, all of us having opened and closed that door thousands of times as we dashed off to school, church, the backyard, the garden, to water the cats, to feed the baby calves, to go for a sunset walk, to get fresh air when we needed a break from mama-meltdowns.

The cupboard hinges keep breaking. And the overpriced carpet that I picked wears the wounds of a few dozen toddler mishaps and slumber parties.

You built us a lovely home, kind sir, but I have slowly begun to learn that you didn’t build our dream home. We did.

We are building our dream home, not with two-by-fours, but with love and tears and laughter and messes and sick-days and no-power days and in the midst of winter doldrums and hurt feelings and kissed foreheads. We’ve built a house at the piano bench and the kitchen sink and that bedside prayer spot where we aren’t scared to ask for big things from an even bigger God.

This house became a dream home, not when you handed us the shiny keys, Mr. Builder, but over the course of years and memories, when it started to get dinged-up and loved-up.

This is a house that love built–

The bruises and scrapes are the souvenirs of a life lived fuller and messier and louder than we ever dreamed.

And that’s how a dream house is built: Somewhere between the spilled Fanta and the night we chipped the baseboards trying to smack down that crazy mouse with a broom. The dent from the “Great Mouse Massacre of 2005″ is still there, and it makes me laugh every time, remembering how I wanted to scream at midnight, but my husband shushed me so we wouldn’t wake the baby.

I have come to appreciate the house for what it has become: a storyteller. This house carries a long-term memory all its own, reminding me of all the life I might otherwise forget.

Look. You won’t see our scattered socks on the pages of House Beautiful or Southern Living. But I find my dream home in these places where drawers yawn open, because I know that someday, the girl who made the mess won’t live here anymore.

We’ve got this table, you see, and it’s one long scratched-up rectangle where there’s always an open seat for someone. We love to have all of our feet under the same table. Here, the mid-morning sunlight slants in through the picture window, pooling in the nicks and scrapes and fork tines. Years ago, our youngest daughter pounded in the wood; it was her first time using a “big-people fork.” I ran my hands along the marks this morning, each fork-tine holding a memory.

Our dream home has kept a running record of the important messes, like a spreadsheet of what really matters. We’ve made spaces where we can string yarn and beads, where we can fling paint onto canvas and where we stretch dreams onto young souls.

The house is a diary, and I re-read it every day, even as we add daily to its pages.

Dishes stay on counters longer than they should. Books are stacked high on bedsides and in baskets. I find a child’s fingerprints memorialized in dust.

Some of the decor has gotten a bit outdated, and yes, we do “messy” well. But that’s OK. Because it won’t be long until the rooms echo an old, unrepeatable story.

When that day comes, you might find me standing inside the echo, reading the diary of an old house. I’ll be looking for the fingerprints and the fork-tines and the dreams on which a house is really framed up. And I will thank God for even the broken parts, because that’s where the dream came true.

Signed,

The Happy Owner of a Dream House

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