Welcome to our humble farmhouse-ish home. What is a farmhouse-ish home? Let me just borrow this quirky definition I found on a sign that I bought from Amazon.
Farmhouse-ish - a rustic dwelling located on a farm (minus the animals, barn, and actual farm).
When we first moved in to our 2 - storey home, it was just 40% completed with its building foundations laid and concretes poured and cured, the roofing newly installed. The walls were unpainted, roughly finished, the CHBs (concrete hollow blocks) were exposed on the exteriors, the ribbed metal roofing emitted too much heat at day-time and sent cold chills at night-time for lack of a proper ceiling and insulation. The exposed beams made of timbers from our ceiling were a sight to see for birds that figured out they could make our unwalled 3-bedroom second floor their nesting habitat. Thus, the bird droppings on our floor! As a single-income family, it was not hard to explain why we had the audacity to move in to our first home after living on rental for five years. We were a young couple building our young family and homeschooling our then four year-old daughter. We were excited to move in to our new but rugged home.
It felt like there's a ticking time bomb that's waiting to explode any minute in our new home. And unless we did something about it, it will keep haunting us anywhere we turned. The unseen leaking pipes buried in our concrete wall made us realize that indeed, cracks don't get smaller. In this case, the leaking would not abate and instead it got stronger by the hour because of too much water pressure. We were confronted by something that we cannot avoid any longer.
In order to rectify the worsening situation, we dug deep into our pockets employed the help of a trusted neighbor handyman to blind-search the leaking pipes. He started the tedious masonry job of taking down one side of our bathroom wall, one pound of hammer-chisel at a time. After about four hours, the culprit was exposed. Buried in the concrete wall was one water pipe connector that was not sealed! Up to this day, our plumber contractor was nowhere to be found.
We went to bed that day with a smile on our faces. We enjoyed our sacred tea time in the late evening and enumerated one by one the things that we're thankful to the Lord for - the unfinished house that we can finally call our home; the cold roof over our heads at night; the bugs that kept finding their way through the gaps between the hollow blocks; the very few number of family members that we felt safe to invite over. Thank God, Facebook was not yet a thing then!
As we looked outside of our window, we gazed at the stars, our voices in a hush. We described how we wanted our home to be. Definitely not a Martha Stewart home though it would be nice if we can afford it. A home that welcomes and refreshes the tired souls with free-flowing coffee and tea because life is so much better with them. A home where we can teach our children the ways of the Lord and how to follow Him while we prepare them for the big life. Our first homeschooled daughter is on the 3rd year of college now and I appreciate how she describes authenticity as not trying to be something that you are not. That's basically the sentiment. We want a house like no other. A house that reflects our imperfectly rugged joyful life as we completed each element through the years.
What's wrong with this house? That is not hard to answer. Kadami! We worked around the construction mistakes that we've had over the first few years here. We've learned to practice the art of contentment by using what we have and made it work for us. We were able to teach the virtue of patience to our own children by living it out on a daily basis. For example, our daughter had to wait in order for us to have a fully-painted house. She was already 9 years old around this time and old enough to grasp the concept of waiting. In the end, her prayers were answered, to have her own room painted in baby pink.
Somehow, things started to fall into their rightful places as our home developed its own character. It has aged well as it looked older than its actual age. And in case I haven't mentioned yet, we only invited our safe people to come over to our home. Those who love us for who we are; those who won't criticize our style choices; those who are like-minded people that are pleasant to be with; those who won't judge us; and those who, like us, thrive in mutual respect.
We've also learned to practice the art of hospitality. Besides our own family circle, we mindfully thought of our unknown people, those we haven't met yet. We became more intentional in creating pocket spaces and large dining tables with literally enough elbow rooms for communing together. Along the way, we've learned how to joyfully serve as we make room for more. But this is for another blog entry on this series, What's Wrong With This House? Lord-willing? Thank you for dropping by.
Psalm 127:1-2 NASB
