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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
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Not Home Until We Die

by Broderick Barker

Life is a needling hailstorm of offers and counter-offers, repair requests and counters to those requests, the parade of physical inspectors, termite inspectors, appraisers, contractors -- all in duplicate, since we attempting to sell one house even as we buy another -- all necessitating a barrage of calls to our agent's answering service. Waiting for the phone to ring, it feels like our whole life hangs in the balance -- where will we be living come November? How long before we know, one way or the other?

I understand something of what Paul meant when he recommended against marrying. "I want you to be free from anxieties," he wrote. "The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord.; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided." I am anxious indeed (though all I have has been given to me, home and hearth included), and, lilies and sparrows notwithstanding, I give much thought to what I shall wear, what I shall eat and drink, where I shall lay my head. My kids need more space, both inside and out. I must provide it for them. "Whatever God wants," my mom intones, and I groan interiorly. Yes, of course, but come now. This is my home; these are my children -- it is hard to gain detachment.

The business has been a nasty poke of a reminder that we are not home, and will not be home until we die. (I called it a purgatory -- a misnomer. There is no certainty to ease the anxiety. It is very much earth.) We are but waiting here to find out where we are going to live come eternity, waiting and working. This isn't where we are going to live, only a brief way station -- not much sense in even unpacking our boxes, except we have to in order to make a life pleasing to Him.

That's the trick, and I hate it. I want so very much to just be settled. I used to talk about living in our current house indefinitely, cramming all our future children into 1100 square feet of space and a postage-stamp yard, all for the sake of preserving that feeling of stability, settledness. Again, I hear the refrain, "Whatever the Lord wants." Again, I nod assent and carry on fretting over plans.

The ordeal has provided a good lesson in giving everything over. A curious lesson, since I don't really have anything to give except my will, but there it is. The impotence of my own will to affect things has been made manifest to me again and again. Our house sold for less than we wanted -- we took the advice of our more expert agent. Our first two offers on other houses -- good offers, we thought -- were rejected, and my wife had to undecorate mentally. The house we bought cost more than we had hoped We were not in charge; we were floating leaves, buffeted by the tides.

I ought to cling to God when our bark is upset by storms, rather than entertain tiny resentments toward Him or forget about Him altogether. This suffering is small, even petty, but it is suffering nonetheless, and so may be joined to the work of the cross. I've been working at it; so has my wife.

It has provide lessons in not feeling too settled, and in the penetration of God into something so mundane as the response to a physical inspection. I hate talking with friends about the ordeal -- it seems so material, so bound up with the world, as to be shameful. Surely it's wrong to give so much time to thinking about a single created, inanimate thing.

God is spirit, but the world, as Hopkins told us, is charged with His grandeur, and he insinuates himself into the most material aspects of creation. He sanctifies the fleshy union of sex, making it an occasion of grace. He even ties Himself up with filthy lucre, and upon consideration, this is not surprising. Money is deeply connected to the spiritual life, for it forms a quick and powerful attachment to our hearts and wills. It's called the root of all evil because it is the first agent of self-gratification. A friend of mine recounted that a particular spiritual revelation had come to him this past Lent when he read in scripture that the giving of alms is efficacious for the removal of sin. You can't buy your way into heaven, but you can perhaps save your way into hell. And if God can trouble Himself with money, He no doubt has a hand in where I shall work out my salvation.

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