Peterson Bain Howell house
I just got back to Texas from visiting my mom and sisters and we had a wonderful time celebrating together. Mom is gorgeous as ever and my sisters are all as fun loving and kind and generous as ever. It was great to see everyone and to bring all the children together so they could play with their cousins.
As I watched all the children playing, I remember my own childhood home in Goldsboro NC. as a place where I played outside constantly, drawing space ships and swinging on “Mr. Swing” on the front porch. Someone recently had bought it and had been working to restore it and I was able to visit it (and visit yummy Wilber’s BBQ earlier in the day for lunch) and see all the renovations that had been done.
The new owners, a man I went to high school with. and his lovely wife and three children, said that he had hired an engineer who told him that the home, structurally, “had good bones” and so he was able to purchase it with confidence.
He told me how all the solid copper plumbing had been stolen from underneath the home and he had to redo all the plumbing, to the street, and redo all the electrical, also to the street, to start off the renovations. I was so thrilled to see the home my dad referred in his writings to us, his five daughters, as, “a gracious lady”, being restored to her former beauty, as he had always imagined.
When I visited, the new owners had taken the time to save wall papers, from each of the rooms and they shared them with us. I was able to identify each of the wallpapers, that had been on the walls, that my mom had chosen, and was excited to see the wallpapers that were underneath as well.
I told Ricky who is also from NC. and his hospitable wife from Brazil, that when we moved into the home when I was in grade school, the whole entry hall with the winding staircase, had wallpaper that my mom said looked a lot like cabbages. from a distance. I remember it was a dusty rose red on a white background and had horses on it.
Racehorses are spectacular and I love the analogy of life as a “race” and have heard many motivational speakers talk about how each of us has to “run our own race.” So if people are racehorses, I believe that the home I grew up in, when it housed our family, housed an “incredible stable” of racehorses.
Because I had need of braces growing up, kids teased me and said I had horse teeth, but I did not mind and I loved to pretend I was a horse running around on the playground at St. Mary’s school. I have always loved horses, and my dad took us as often as he could, to ride the pony my sister had won at a county fair, that she had named Merry Legs.
When our family went to Colorado, there were horses just down the road from us at a farm, and I loved seeing how the public library in Denver had a large sculpture of a pinto pony on a red chair, titled “the yearling”. It was originally in New York, but those who commissioned it in New York, wanted the horse removed from the chair. The artist refused because he said that the horse added a “sense of wonder” to the sculpture so the horse ended up in Denver.
Horses as analogous of people, running races or being the “chairman” are fascinating to me. So I wanted to see if I could find the wallpaper that was in the house originally when we moved in, and show it to the new owners. The home was in need of repair and the sheet rock was deteriorated back then when we lived in the home, and so the wallpaper was damaged, which was why my mom replaced it.
I was thrilled to find what I think was either the exact wallpaper or very similar wallpaper, and it is called “Grand Prix” and it is smokey red wallpaper from the derby collection, by “mind the gap”. The wallpapers are made in Transylvania, Romania. This wallpaper is described as drawing from the french Toile de Jouy pattern.
My appreciation of France is mostly limited to my regular visits to La Madeleine's in Houston, and I wondered if perhaps my love of french cuisine and decor comes from living in a home where there was some french influence?
But even more than my physical surroundings, being spiritually grounded in a christian home, I knew that the morals and principles we grew up with, gave us a spiritual cornerstone, to help foster an appreciation of the little people, or the common man as my dad and mom would teach us, by their actions.
I thought about how Jesus said “thou art peter and upon this rock I will build my church”. The home I grew up in, as you can see in the above photo, is built on rocks, that were shipped in from Maine. But a house is not a home until it is full of people. Our home, a very christian, and traditional Catholic home, had God as our cornerstone.
Jesus also talked about a building when he talked about the temple
“During the early part of Christ’s ministry (28 AD), He went up to Jerusalem. There, He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. So, “He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” (John 2:16).
This was Jesus’ first cleansing of the Temple, His first act of national importance. By it He declared His right to look after the affairs of the Temple and announced His mission as the Messiah.”
“Then, the Jews said to Him, “What sign do You show to us, since You do these things? Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” (John 2:19,20; cf. Matt. 24:2; Mark 13:1, 2; Acts 6:14).
Jesus clearly was talking figuratively. By these words, He for the first time spoke of what will happen to Him at the end of His ministry. Thus, He referred to the body temple (1 Cor. 3:16, 17; 6:19, 20), and specifically to His own resurrection (John 2:19, 21).”
I like to think our country is analogous to one home. It has endured many years and has survived, but there have been times with recent presidents who seem to be working in the deep state, where money changers seem to be getting established and need to be RUN OUT.
But still, like my childhood home, it has good bones (called the constitution). And like my childhood home, even while people are running the government, there are those sneaking and going underneath and stealing the copper piping trying to benefit themselves at a great cost to those who live there.
Evil arms of our government, which lack backbone or which fail to do as the law dictates, with ineptness and lack of consequences, are damaging the homes of its people. WE need to let God back in. I believe that has happened in our home, and it has been rebuilt.
In the same way, I believe that our country is letting God back in and he will rebuild our country QUICKLY, ( in three days), in spite of what Biden or big pharma, or the global elites are trying to do.
There is nothing that God cannot do. It might seem like a miracle, but each of us, as racehorses, must be our best, and run our race and miracles are commonplace with God. Like the glamorous french wallpaper, we might seem to be deteriorating, but it is a mistake to believe that we cannot quickly and completely be restored to our former robust and strong selves.
Eevie, who is now six, was telling me that some friends of hers had a dog that died and “nothing could be done”. She told me this after watching Charlotte's web, and saying that “nothing could be done” about the spider dying either. And then I reminded her of “miracles” and how they are common with God.
I told her that the spider, and the dog, do not know how to pray. I reminded her that people DO know how to pray and we have the gift of intelligence because God made us that way. Because we are different, and we can pray, we can EXPECT miracles.
The restoration of my childhood home is like a miracle to me. It includes a renewed and restored confidence in the appreciation of HOME, of that which has endured and maintained something good, in spite of everything around it that seems to have been destroyed. Because of this beautiful 704 home, I am confident that our government also will be restored. THE PEOPLE and THEIR HOMES, their values, and most of all their trust in God, will “build back this temple”.
Good Government here in the USA has been, and should always be, minimalistic, by the people and for the people…not for some big globalist agenda. People are free to do their best when they are unencumbered, unhampered and unfettered by, big, ponderous, slow moving, oppressive government.
All the censoring of free speech by social media, acting as the arm of big government can stop. All the fraud in elections can stop. All the antagonism and brutalization of journalists who do not fit the liberal agenda, can stop. All the posturing by government, to force abortions and to force vaccines, can stop. All the manipulation of the court system, to allow invasion of privacy, can stop, and those court cases that permit it can be reversed. (United States vs. Miller 1976)
These things in the government are analogous to the plumbing and the wiring that is SUPPOSED to be supporting homes of the common and ordinary people in the cities and suburbs. They cannot support homes and families if they are allowing theft and swamps to occur, can they?
The repair of this problem called Big Government, is happening, faster and faster, and God is watching. Christians are in the Grand Prix just like the wallpaper depicts, and they are winning. It is not about “race” it is about “the race”
…are each of us racing our best race? I know I am. We are all in it and I can’t wait to see it happen. Nothing can stop God.