Down a country road from us there's a mobile home park, perhaps the loveliest one Tom and I have ever seen. (And trust me, back East here, we've seen some of the most abominable ones.) But in this park, people have huge yards with sprawling green lawns and tall, ancient trees (forests, some of them) and white picket fences around flower gardens. They have patios with bistro tables and chairs and some yards have sunflowers, colorful birdhouses on posts, and most all these well-maintained homes have a full-size, attached garage. Almost no yard is 'overdone' and nearly all resemble miniature countrysides.

Tom and I love that place and we drive it's quiet little lanes often, usually while discussing how simple, picturesque and serene it appears and wouldn't it be peaceful to live there someday?

I know, I know. What are we thinking? We just moved to our tiny farm this summer.

I guess what we're thinking is ahead. Especially since we discovered this week from Tom's friend at work that--at that mobile home park--you must be over 50 to live there. Hmm. Interesting.

Something else. In our area of New York, this summer we attended a few House Sales, as they are called. House Sales are like Estate Sales except that no one has passed away, but rather, a couple (or family) has chosen to sell the vast majority of their home's contents for a myriad of reasons, either out of necessity or a desire to start all over in a new place. So they allow whole crowds to go traipsing through their house buying anything with a price tag stuck to it.

Love that. Why? For eons I've wished to be present at my own in-the-future Estate Sale, for I'd love to hear people's comments about what I'd collected over my lifetime.

"Gee, how old were these people anyway? They have stuff from every single decade since 1900 and it's hard to tell..."

"Why would anyone hold onto this stuff? Must have been penny-pinchers."

"Oh, she must have been a kindred spirit. I have so many of the same books, dishes and linens."

"Oh, she had such lovely things."

"Oh, she had such dreadful things."

heh. But at an estate sale, well, generally you are dead, so that would complicate the whole hearing comments thing. :)

But at one House Sale, we listened to the owner tell about her new home and she sounded excited. Her kitchen, this one she would soon leave, was stuffed with red and white enamelware for sale and the cutest hutches, but my covertly-listening ears recognized that glee at beginning all over again...the challenge and wonder of it. It's a feeling I've had, myself, but have never followed through on a bold, grand scale.

But someday, yes! Already Tom and I have discussed our own House Sale and how we'll hire someone to manage the money table so we can wander around pretending we're purchasers when actually, we're eavesdropping.

And following the sale perhaps we'll move into that lovely old mobile home park with the sprawling yards and attached garages and we'll have that 'playing house' feeling which we had in our apartment earlier this year. Frankly? Sometimes we miss that apartment and its true simplicity. Maybe we didn't live there long enough to tire of it (though we did tire of the outside noise). But how pleasant to live with only half our possessions and not even miss the other half. How fun and nostalgic to feel as we did thirty years ago when we first married and owned, well, nothing much, and felt free and lighter, less bogged-down.

My point? I'm just grateful that both Tom and I respect the seasons of Life. We are not dreading the future and we're not grasping onto this new farmhouse and land with a choke hold, a fierce allegiance to it for the remainder of our lives. We know people who swear they will never leave their present home, even should they grow too sick or old to care for it, yet that's not who we are.

No, we try to hold onto our possessions--and our very lives--with a wide, open hand. There is an ebb and flow to life and we wish to live in the center of that. True, there's a whole lot of change happening there, but there's also a whole lot of freedom and trust and faith there, as well. And it's pretty exciting to live in any place where you must trust that God knows best and that to follow His timing is the only real way to go.


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"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven... a time to be born, and a time to die..."