Coming Home

In August 2025, I published the first blog entry on this website. I started it in Colorado while traveling to be with family.

I was determined that it would endure. My goal was lofty: a post every Wednesday.

And for quite a while, there was a post every week—most of the time even on a Wednesday!

My last two entries were entreaties to you, my beloved readers, to hang in there during a short hiatus, with the promise that I would be back regularly.

Here I am!

This time from Maryland.

Returning to our home place has been relatively easy, though it’s come with mixed emotions. My grandson and his partner treat me like royalty. LOL! Maybe it is simply loving respect for their granny, but it feels like being pampered.

I work around their schedules and help with chores when they are mostly not here—so they cannot stop me.

I was raised to believe that as long as I am able, I am to serve to the best of my ability and be as little a burden to others as possible. Besides, one of my spiritual gifts is service.

So far, we seem to be embracing my emergence into their sanctuary quite well, respecting each other’s space and time.

And then there is the refrigerator.

The day I arrived, I opened the 1930s refrigerator to see how it was doing and discovered the icebox covered in—well, ice.

An inordinate amount of ice.

They were already in the process of defrosting it, with containers and towels strategically placed to catch the melting water.

I was informed this had just been done the week before!

After conversations with our family in Hawaii, who actually own said home place, a replacement 1930s-era refrigerator was purchased. It was brought in, the old one was removed, the new one began cooling down, and everyone went to bed happy with our new-to-us appliance.

The next day, it quit cooling.

Of course it did.

Everything was removed and fitted into the basement refrigerator.

Over the past week, we have developed a system while waiting for a repair person to come and restore our newest asset to its intended purpose.

During the first 24 hours, somewhere around my fourth or fifth trip down to the basement for milk for my cereal or cream for my coffee, I found myself grumbling that maybe we would have been better off keeping the old refrigerator and defrosting it every week.

Halfway back up the stairs, I started chuckling.

Good grief.

I sounded like the Israelites in the desert when everything was not quite to their liking.

Back in Egypt, they had homes. They had food. They knew what to expect. Yes, they were slaves, but generations had learned how to carve out lives within that system.

Now they were trudging through a wilderness toward a land God had promised would flow with milk and honey.

But where was the honey?!?

Looking backward can become awfully enticing when moving forward gets uncomfortable.

And we know what happened to Lot’s wife when she disobeyed and looked back!

So I stopped that nonsense, adjusted, and am awaiting the promise of a long-term refrigerator solution. 😁

But it made me think.

When was the last time you found yourself doing something similar—not with a refrigerator necessarily, but looking backward and romanticizing what used to be because the present was inconvenient, uncomfortable, or simply not what you expected?

Come on now. I cannot be the only one who has ever done that.

Maybe I’m just one of the ones willing to admit it.

Anyway, refrigerator shenanigans aside, I love being back in this home that is more than 100 years old.

I am sleeping in the bedroom Fred and I shared during the last season of his life, before he went home to be with Jesus.

My tender-hearted grandson asked if I would be okay occupying this room again.

I told him, “I have been longing to get back to that room. That’s the last place I was with your Papa.”

When Fred and I moved here with the family, we knew we were coming to Maryland because his time with us was growing short. This room holds memories that are tender and painful, but it also holds love.

I don’t fear those memories.

I am grateful to be surrounded by them.

And yes, I have told God that if it is His plan, I would be content for this old house to be the place from which I eventually go home, too.

But that decision is above my pay grade.

Apparently, God has not made me privy to that particular part of the plan. 😊

For now, I am here.

I am home.

I am settling in.

I am writing again.

And I had planned to have a winter garden planted by now…

Well.

That’s a story for another day.

Thank you, my loyal friends and readers, for hanging in there with me this past year. Thank you for your prayers during this transition and for continuing to walk alongside me through all these chapters.

Here’s to many more.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
— Jeremiah 29:11

Gritty Granny here—back home, still learning, still laughing, and still gittin’ her grit on.