When Bare Walls Haunt You, Hang Pictures!

The night before Crystal moved away from home to teach, as I tried to go to sleep, I suddenly felt like my joy was going out of my life.

 

Crystal has enriched our life ever since we found out she was on her way to join our family!

That was at Easter time 26 years ago, when we found out we had a Christmas gift on the way!

She was due on Christmas Day! 

Ever since she was born, she has been my joy (and sometimes a pain, to be completely honest, like when she kept eating stuff like dead cockroaches in our apartment in Ukraine, or dropped quite a few books into the bathtub water, 

but definitely far more joy than pain!)

 She was the one to keep me company all the years I missed Jonathan so badly when he was always gone to long days of work and I had to stay home with babies.

Crystal probably knows me better than anyone, and she also has probably absorbed more of me than others....Oh dear. I wonder what that means? Maybe that is why she roars when she laughs and makes funny noises, just like me!

She's always loved music, ever since she started jumping around in utero anytime music started up during church services in Ukraine, and then catching on so quickly to children's choruses I taught her, and from there learning piano to where she can play complicated hymn arrangements now, and

now is learning mountain dulcimer to play for elderly, as she did with us a couple weeks ago.

I'm so thankful that her back has improved from an injury a couple years ago to where she can again do her own work and not be in constant pain and getting back spasms just from moving something heavy.

The morning after she left, I went down to Crystal's empty room where Hannah was asking about something, and I started looking around at all the empty walls and the bare mattress and I had to get out of there fast! 

It was just TOO MUCH!

This wasn't quite the same as her just going off to college and coming home in between. At least then her room was left intact--the bed made, pictures and decor on the walls, pretty furniture and decor that became prettier by the year as she learned to decorate better than her mother can.

This was not the same as leaving for college. This time she actually moved out. 

And it's not the same. 

I had no idea my heart would ache that badly!

I wondered how much hearts ache when people lose someone forever, if mine ached this badly over a daughter, and a day later, a middle son, leaving home for teaching or for college!

Finally I knew I had to do something about it.

I had to hang something on those bare walls!

So we did and we are. The walls are not done yet, but we aren't letting those walls stay bare.

I'm not letting myself go on hurting unnecessarily. 

Curtains went up this morning, and plans are in the making for a guest room.

It is a natural and good thing for young people to leave the nest and go on their way, and I am incredibly grateful that Crystal is doing her best to do God's will and go through an open door, and that Timmy is seeking to do God's will in going to Bible College.

So when bare walls haunt me with a certain loss, I find pictures to hang, and make phone calls to the children I am missing, and enjoy the sunny windows filled with a forest of sunflowers!