The Shed

It is amazing how life can change one’s impression of a location. I’m back in Abilene, and every time I’m here I drive by our first house. This is the house Lindsay and I bought right before we got married. We welcomed our dogs, Chief, into our family there a few months before we got married (and Chloe the next Valentine's Day). We came home from our Mexican honeymoon and unloaded our car full of presents into this house on the 4th of July back in ‘03. This is the house that I put almost a thousand square feet of Pergo flooring down, painted every room and built a fence with my neighbor the pilot. I remember coming home to that house from Grace Bible Study on Tuesday nights and I remember having dinner ready for Lindsay when she came home from working at Hendrick Medical Center. I remember trying to black out the bedroom windows for the few months that Lindsay had to work night shift. I remember getting a blowup pool for the dogs to keep cool in the summer. So many memories that over time seem to have all been brushed positive, but the memories there weren’t positive for the house’s new occupant.
There was a shed in our backyard that our dogs would go into when it was cold. Actually a few times they would go into the shed, accidentally shutting the door and then find themselves trapped. I would have to go out to emancipate them. My Boxers would burst out the door and leave their futon bed in shambles. But now the shed no longer stands.
As the gossip mill has reported, one of the renters found himself consumed with guilt and thought that another way didn’t exist. So he committed suicide in that shed. Someone, I’m not sure who, decided to tear down the shed. As I drove by the backyard I saw our dog’s blow up pool sitting on top of a pile of rubble from that shed. Life and her memories can be so wonderful and at the same time it can be so painful.
Lord Jesus come soon…