The House We Never Bought
Not long after that first reading… I found myself asking a question I couldn’t quite put down.
What am I supposed to do with this?
I was still working at the church. Still living my life the way I always had. But something had shifted, and I could feel it.
So I prayed.
A lot.
—
Around that same time, we found a house.
An A-frame.
My favorite kind.
It sat on five acres of land—quiet, surrounded by trees, with that feeling you can’t quite explain but you know when you feel it.
There was a story to it.
The man who built it had passed away in an accident, and the house had just been sitting there. No family living in it. Just waiting.
We put in an offer.
It was accepted… contingent on us selling our home.
—
So we started going there.
Here and there.
Sometimes for coffee.
Sometimes just to sit.
Someone might call it squatting.
To me, it felt more like a sabbatical.
—
One morning, after the kids went to school, I brought my coffee over and sat out on the deck.
It was quiet.
The kind of quiet that feels full.
I remember looking out over the trees and the land… and without really thinking about it, I started to sing.
I love you, Lord…
Over and over again.
I didn’t want to stop.
There was something about being there, in that moment, that just felt… held.
—
After a while, I got up and started walking through the house, taking pictures.
Just simple ones.
Walls. Angles. Spaces.
Thinking about what we might do if it became ours.
What we would change.
What we would keep.
One of the photos I took was from inside the house, facing out toward the deck.
The same place I had been sitting.
—
Later that day, I went home and plugged the camera into the computer.
Just flipping through the pictures casually.
Until I got to that one.
And stopped.
—
There was something on the deck.
Exactly where I had been sitting.
—
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I called my husband in.
Am I seeing this… or are you seeing it too?
He looked.
Paused.
His eyes widened.
He saw it.
—
An angel.
Clear enough that neither of us questioned it.
Not something blurry.
Not something you had to convince yourself of.
Just… there.
—
I told him what I had been doing.
What I had been singing.
And he smiled.
And in that moment, I felt something settle inside of me.
Because I had been asking.
Quietly.
Honestly.
What am I supposed to do with all of this?
—
Not long after that…
we lost the house.
We couldn’t sell ours.
No matter what we tried, it just wouldn’t move.
So we let it go.
And as soon as we did…
it sold.
Almost immediately.
And then we had a fleeting moment where we directed our efforts toward something crazy.
Florida.
Once we made that decision, our house sold.
Quickly.
But that’s another story; for another time.
—
Looking back now, it’s almost impossible not to see it.
At the time, it felt confusing.
Disappointing, even.
But now?
It feels like direction.
—
Sometimes the place you think you’re being led to…
isn’t the place at all.
Sometimes it’s what happens while you’re there.
What you feel.
What you’re shown.
What begins to open inside of you.
—
We never lived in that house.
But something in me changed while I was there.
And not long after that…
I stopped asking what I was supposed to do with this.
And started listening.
With love,
Mary Rose
