The "family room" at the lake-house is long and runs nearly the whole width of the house. The door to the carport, which is the door everyone uses, is at one end...and the kitchen is at the other end. Part-way through the room is a round, brick fire pit. Hanging over it is a large, copper hood/shaft thing. It looks like the Apollo 13 capsule, only upside down. The small part was at the top, going into the ceiling...and the large bottom part hovered over the fire-pit. This monstrosity separated the "family room" area from the dining area.
It's to this day one of the oddest things I have ever seen.
My in-laws have never used the fireplace that I know of. I honestly don't know how they would. Looks like the room would completely fill up with smoke.
One time, though, a flying squirrel crawled down that thing and ran all over the downstairs part of the house until it was finally caught. I remember it because we were there at the time. Two of my boys were laying (lying) down on the floor, looking up at the TV...and that squirrel went flying over them.
There was so much screaming.
And then I realized it was me.
Everyone jumped up and started hollering. My husband had the foresight to grab a pair of work gloves that had been thrown on the table. Thank goodness, because when he finally caught the squirrel, it spent the last few minutes of it's life trying to bite through those gloves, to give Jim a good case of rabies or whatever.
Jim said squirrels carry "every disease known to man."
Jim walked up the hill to the dog pen, holding that squirrel in his gloved hand. Our Labs were going NUTS. He threw that squirrel in the pen with the dogs, and never looked back.
I know.
But the squirrel could've gotten away...if he was fast. There were trees and a fence and a shed that he could've climbed. I'm choosing to believe he made it.
Please don't write me about the squirrel. When he scampered over my sons, he sealed his fate. It was him or me...and it wasn't gonna be me.
ANYwayyyy, this was the year my mother-in-law decided that it was just too much trouble to get out the Christmas tree. She said it took up so much space, and it was a big hassle for her.
Plus, side note: she's got those lights on it that make music and blink at random times. I don't know about you, but that drove me nuts.
So, she took strands of Christmas garland, and wound them around and around the copper chimney that came down out of the ceiling. Since it's in the shape of a cone, it looked like a tree coming down out of Heaven. My mother-in-law called it the "chimney tree." She was pretty proud of herself for thinking of it.
She bought a bunch of these red ball ornaments and wrote everyone's names on them so that they would all be the same. Except that some ornaments had broken...and some were lost. She stressed over where to put everyone's ornament, because she thinks that we think that one side of the chimney tree is better and more visible than the other side...when in reality, we.do.not.care.
Most of us. (wink!)
She had put a clump here and a clump there...with NONE of them on the back-side of the chimney tree...just so no one would be offended.
I don't get it, because the "back side" of the chimney tree is actually the FRONT side of the chimney tree...if you are sitting at the kitchen table. Or in the truth chairs.
Holly went and found more red ornaments, and she made sure every person had their name on one of them. She took all of them off the chimney tree and rearranged them in the shape of a big cross on the front side. It looked great! Every time I saw it, all I could think of was, "It.Is.Finished (bum-bum), the bat-tle-is-o-ver (DA-da-da-DA-da-da), It.Is.Finished (bum-bum), there'll be no more warrrrrrr..."
Do y'all know that song?
But when things got loud at the lake-house, AS THEY USUALLY DID when we were all together (because we all have our own ideas and our own ways of doing things), it seemed out-of-place to have a cross there in the middle of everything.
Like it didn't "belong."
Like what sometimes goes on in a house...with a family...would not match up with the life Christ has called us to live.
Like even when there is tension or chaos or loud words or hurt feelings or defensiveness...the CROSS stands as our beacon of hope...our standard...and the lighthouse for when we get off course.
The cross should always belong...in our homes and in our lives.
"Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone." Colossians 4:6
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