Garden City is not my home

Last week, my siblings and I helped my mom sort through 56 years of living in our house on Rosslyn Street in Garden City, Michigan. In all likelihood, it was the last time I’ll sleep in my hometown and the last time I’ll set foot in the house. My mom will be moving to a senior citizen condominium complex in a few weeks.

As far as I know, Garden City, Michigan is known for the following things:
1) The very first K-Mart
2) The very first Little Caesar’s Pizza Parlor
3) The birth place of leadership guru John Maxwell

But, I know Garden City for my first 17 years of life. There were baseball games at Moeller Field and attending school at Marquette Elementary (since torn down), Radcliffe Jr. High (it closed too) and Garden City West High School (apparently West was not best—as our chant indicated, because – you guessed it, West closed after my graduation. So, if you are keeping score—every school I attended prior to college has shut down, even the church where I went to Sunday School for most of those years is a doctor’s office now… I am a little worried for Olivet and the Nazarene Seminary). I marched in the hometown Thanksgiving Day parades as a cub scout and later as a member of the Fighting Tigers Marching band (If you’ve seen my clapping “skills” in one of our services it may come as a surprise that I was a percussionist—a bad percussionist, but a percussionist none the less). I hunted for Easter candy and watched fireworks at the Garden City Park. As I drove out of town last Wednesday, I wondered if I would ever be back.

There are a lot of memories within the walls of the house on Rosslyn Street. In that house we had a “Party Line” with our neighbor which has nothing to do with dancing the conga, and everything to do with one phone line for two houses. We also had one bathroom for six people (my folks added a bathroom after all of the kids moved out. I guess one bathroom was OK for six people but not adequate for two). There were memories of my sister’s cooking experiments which to this day, to coin the cliché, have left a bad taste in my mouth, and seeing her smooch her boyfriend in the hallway which prompted me to make kissing noises and prompted her to get really, really angry. There were Wiffle ball and basketball games on the driveway, football in the front yard and “curb ball” games in the street. The back yard served as a pitching mound where I pretended to be Mickey Lolich throwing a ball against the garage (As you could probably guess, the Tigers always won those pretend games.), the home to our dogs Chester, Tramp and Goober, and the “final resting place” for at least one hamster. It was on Rosslyn Street that my brother learned that diving head first into cement curbs can really hurt, my dad learned you shouldn’t jump “incorrectly” off garages onto cement driveways (that hurts too, apparently jumping the “correct” way does not), and I learned if the garage door was a wee bit wider (or if I was a wee bit better driver), the side-view mirror wouldn’t get ripped-off my dad’s car.

As I stepped out of the side door and into my car—I knew I was leaving those memories behind.

32701 Rosslyn was my parent’s home and my childhood home, but it’s not my home. Jesus said it best: “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.” (John 14:1-3 NLT). I’ll be going home one day, but not to Rosslyn Street. My home is in the Father’s House, it’s a wonderful place of which Paul wrote: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” (2 Corinthians 2:9) I am not exactly sure what Paul meant by all of that—but I think it means that my heavenly home will not need a window air conditioning unit to keep the upstairs cool in the summertime nor will it need the blanket supply of Fort Riley in order to stay warm in the basement. I think Paul meant, heaven will be more than a house, as you and I will finally be home.

Admittedly, I was a little sad driving away from my childhood house, but I can’t wait to get to my heavenly home.