Last week, a monumental thing happened: we made our last mortgage payment. When Joe officially submitted the last payment, and after we high-fived and celebrated, the enormity of the moment hit us: our house was now truly OURS.
It's a marvelous thing to look back and see how it all began. On that May 22, 1998 we sat with lawyers and realtors around a huge conference table and reviewed contracts and transferred funds and signed on the dotted line, after which we took the boys to McDonald's to celebrate the fact that we had just bought a house. But as excited as we were to move in, it was also daunting thinking how long it would take to pay it off.
Twenty-three years, as it would happen.
Sometimes, an ultimate goal can seem so, so far away. And yet, we moved forward one step at a time, one day at a time. And months passed. Then years. Our youngest son was born, the boys went to grade school, high school, college. We celebrated birthdays and First Communions and Christmases. We lived our lives focused on the now until one day we looked up and realized the goal which had seemed so far away was upon us.
Then, a few days later, Joe received in the mail a beautiful gift box celebrating the fact that he had achieved One Million Miler Status with Delta. Inside the box was a gift certificate, a lifetime membership at the Silver Medallion level, two special 1 Million Miler luggage tags, and a commemorative trophy.
One million miles of work. Travel. Sacrifice. Joe working to build the fort while I was holding it down.
I find it incredibly serendipitous that both events happened within a week of each other since they offer so many things to ponder and learn. Lessons about the passage of time, and how distance can be measured in miles or minutes or years; lessons about building a house and making it a home; lessons about going forth but hearing the siren call of hearth and home; lessons about perseverance and doggedness and living in the Now even while planning for the Later.
Mostly, though, I think how time is God's gift, a constant that cannot be speeded up, or reversed, or stopped. We live within it, and whether or not we are moving, we are nonetheless traveling.
Every day I visited the building site with the boys
who wore their Fisher Price tool belts.
One Million Miler with Delta
