This is the third and last of the Retrospectives on restoring my family’s home.  Have a wonderful weekend! 🙂 Looking back on the experience of saving my family’s homeplace, I’ve realized that not only was it a gesture of love, but more importantly, it was an act of faith. Faith, or wearing my rose-colored glasses as I like to say, sustained us through difficult times and propelled us forward. I don’t know where we would have been without it. At the beginning of this journey, shortly after my parents offered us the homeplace, my mom and I took a walk through the house. I remember walking through the dark, dimly lit downstairs hallway, the musty smell of rooms left undisturbed for too long, and cobwebs carefully covering yesterday’s treasures. I remember slowly climbing the stairs, counting each one as I went up. It made me think of Granddaddy. He once shared a story of the time his Grandmother Rieley visited when he was just a boy; she asked, “John, how many steps are there?” He quickly replied, “16!” He told me that he knew the answer because of the many, many times he had carried firewood up these very same stairs. So, after climbing all 16 steps and arriving at the top, I began to look around. Metal and plastic buckets, and maybe even a pot or two, sat strategically placed to catch any drips of water. I glanced around […]

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