the dogfather (on moving and closing sub-chapters)

On the walk home this evening, clutching my cup of Costa Gingerbread Latte, I passed the local recreation ground. As I did, a man walking a beautiful golden Labrador was just leaving the park and heading for a 4wd vehicle which was labelled‘The DogFather’ and in smaller letters towards the rear ‘dog walking, training and psychology’.

Today we finally gained possession of the keys to our new home and so it has been marked the closing of a sub-chapter of our lives. Over the last few weeks we have mentally been crossing things off on the calendar:

Him – my last commute when all the schools are not on holiday

Me – I tweeted this morning 'Last commute from this station 2day from next week will be an even less glamorous style of cattle wagon but more frequent #looking4positive 

Him – my last crawl through 40 minutes of traffic daily just to get to the motorway

Me – my last Gingerbread Latte from the Costa in the village

The train journey reading today was the final chapters of Rachel Held Evans’ book A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I particularly loved the last part where she looks back on the year with a grateful heart for all the things that have happened and lets those pesky sins that cling, float away downstream with crumbs of challah bread and a grateful heart.

I walked homewards, via the village and my heart similarly filled with gratitude. For what’s gone before and how we have reached this point in our lives. Middle-age (OK and some), having taken a circuitous route, but finally in possession of house keys *\o/*

(O yes and my phone has been vibrating very frequently with likes and comments since I posted the facebook status ‘Keys. We have’. Many friends have willingly prayed, willed, sent good vibes, felt and shared the house-buying pain.)

Inwardly singing my favourite words from Phatfish songs made tears prick my eyes as they often do:

How good it is to be loved by You

I will say of the Lord He is my refuge, I will say of the Lord He is my strength, I will say of the Lord He is my shelter and hiding place

I know for sure, particularly when I am mindful, I can look back and ‘see’ each of these things in and between every little detail along the way. Sometimes it has been hard to see forwards, to know what it’s all for. When solicitors have dragged their feet or 'forgotten' something (apart from their bills.) There have been times of significant debt in the last few years and sleepless nights worrying about that.

And moving into a new home won’t mean we have arrived. Nor will it be our perfect dream home in that all-eggs-in-one-basket manner that they hope for on the tv property programmes.

There will be plenty more curveballs in this life.

There will be days when I forget God’s goodness.

But for me today the DogFather and his strap-line was a particularly apt thing to see just before I turned the last corner and arrived home.