The Home That Spanned Four Decades
Several weeks ago, I said goodbye to my childhood home in Mound, Minnesota. It was an emotional day reminiscing about old times. It was meant to be a short-term stay when they moved into the house in 1983. This was a turbulent time in their lives, as they were both fired in 1981 by the Reagan administration in the well-known Air Traffic Controller strike. They had a hard time getting back on their feet until my father landed a good job in 1983, which was when we moved into our modest home (by American standards). My father told me the plan was to build up a larger income to move into a nicer home in the future. Well, that never took place as my parents’ time in this home spanned forty-two years.
When they moved in, my sister was one. My brother followed two years later in 1985, and then eighteen months later, I was born in 1986. There were good reasons why my parents stayed put, even though they could have later on moved into a more luxurious home. One was the proximity to the lake. The house, while not directly on the lake, was only a couple of hundred feet from Lake Minnetonka, arguably Minnesota’s most desirable among “the Land of 10,000 Lakes.” During childhood, we spent many days swimming on the shore that our neighbors graciously let us use. We also later shared a dock down there. This became my sister’s favorite place on earth. The shore facing the west is picturesque as one sees the beautiful waters during the day and the breathtaking sunset in the evening. Growing up, I often imagined Jesus returning to the earth, passing over that glorious western sky as he descended to the earth.
Then there is the park down the road, Swenson Park, where there are far too many memories to tell. This is the place in the winter where I went sledding down “Killer Hill” with my family and friends. This is the place where I played basketball, tennis, and baseball with my childhood buddies. We used to line up our bikes in the outfield as a make-shift fence when we played homerun derby. This is the place where I learned how to catch and hit a baseball. This is the place where my father, brother, and I played catch with the football during the halftime of Vikings games. My father would throw thirty-to-forty-yard spirals as we caught passes over our shoulders. We joked with him in later years that we had to shorten our routes as he got older. One can see why my parents wanted to stay put. The strategic location by the lake and the park made it a great place to raise a family.
Memories in This Home
The home itself is, of course, where the most memories happened. The room I shared with my brother was upstairs, facing the lake. There are many early memories there, mostly playing with Legos. Across the hall was my parents’ room, and down the stairs was my sister’s. In the living room, my father would regularly watch the nightly news. This made me interested in national and world events from an early age, which was the gateway to my love for history. This same room was where we spent a lot of time watching our Minnesota sports teams. My fondest memories were of the holidays. I loved sleeping on Christmas Eve night and awaking in the morning to find presents under the Christmas tree. I enjoyed the Thanksgiving dinners that we had and the barbecues outside on my parents’ deck on the Fourth of July.
The most traumatic event happened in the driveway when we were very little as my brother and I played a game of “Pennies.” The objective of the game was to throw the pennies into the glass cup. Instead of throwing the pennies, I threw the glass, somehow thinking it was a part of the game, and hit my brother’s forehead. He bled and was rushed to the hospital. To this day, he still has a scar there.
There was only one dog that our house could have, and that was a dachshund. As one left, another came. The four dachshunds were Longfellow, Little Red, Chloie, and Luna. The two dogs, when the five of us all lived in the home, were Longfellow and Little Red. I remember when Longfellow was dying in 1997, he barked, wanting us to be with him because he knew he was dying. We all came to his side to be with him as he passed. Not long after Little Red entered our lives. One of the times in life when I cried the hardest was when Little Red passed away in 2013. He was an unforgettable character, and we had so much laughter in the house with him as he was by our side. Years later, childhood friends never forgot Little Red. He was in my life from the fourth grade till I was twenty-six, and most of the memories were in this house.
The Memories That Mattered Most
My most special and significant memory was standing in my sister’s room as a child, my mother sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with me. I remember praying to receive Christ as my Lord and Savior in that place. I remember growing up learning the books of the Bible, memorizing Scripture for Wednesday night, and later for Bible Quizzing. I remember having conversations about the things of the Lord. I remember watching my father every morning doing his Bible devotions before he went to work. This was the home we left every Sunday morning to go to church, and the home we returned to once church was over.
Then, later on in 2013, I brought my future wife, the love of my life, Brianna, to this home. We snapped our first-ever picture together on the deck. When we had my daughter in 2016 and my son in 2019, they built memories there as they looked forward to going to Grandpa and Grandma’s house. My new family, with my wife and kids, had wonderful memories in this home.
Goodbye, One Final Time
The day that we said goodbye, my father and I stood on the back deck and looked out at the yard below, where we once played wiffle ball. All we could say was, “Where did the time go?” I did one last walk-through and thanked the Lord for making this my home in His sweet providence. As I stood outside, I walked up the stairs to the door one last time. When I was nine years old, before we went on a long vacation, I memorably kissed the house before we left. On this day, I did one final kiss to say goodbye.
An Eternal Home
As we think about home, it is the place where we feel most comfortable. It is where we build numerous memories that we carry with us forever. It is where the Lord shapes us and makes us who we are. Home is a refuge in this dangerous and wild world in which we live. The saying, “There is no place like home,” didn’t come from nowhere. This is a wise saying that many can attest to. Our earthly home ought to remind believers in Christ of our heavenly home. Scripture tells us that the longing of the Christian is to be “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). As wonderful as homes on earth are, how much better our forever home in the age to come, where the Lord will dwell forever with His people in eternal bliss (Revelation 21:1-4). Truly, in this place we’ll never have felt more at home.
