Letting things go

Yesterday I spent almost all day cleaning at our trailer in Elizabethton.  We are going to get rid of it as soon as we can, so I have been lax about cleaning it.  It is 36 years old, so it's time for it to go!  I gave it a thorough cleaning starting with the back bathroom and moving through to the front of the trailer.  As I cleaned I remembered so many things that happened here when the boys were growing up.  

If you have ever been inside a trailer, you know that one bedroom is a bit larger than the other two (if it is a 3 bedroom home.)  Even at that, though, the large bedroom is tiny compared to bedrooms in regular homes.  When we moved in, Tommy and I slept in that bedroom, John boy slept in the tiny one...about the size of a closet, and Jason slept in the front bedroom.  When John boy went to college at ETSU he took drum lessons, so we moved him into the "large" bedroom so he could set up his drums and we took the tiny one.  

When John boy left and went to UT Jason wanted to sleep in the large bedroom, so we moved into Jason's room and gave the large one to him.   We have slept in every bedroom in the trailer. 

When we first moved in I did not like that our bedroom was on one end of the trailer and the boy's bedrooms were on the other. (A full 70 feet!)  I had never slept that far away from them.  Tommy came in the first night to go to bed and I was lying in bed reading, and crying.  He knew exactly why.  He told me to get out of bed and he took the mattress off the bed, drug it into the living room and laid it on the floor.  We climbed in giggling all the time!  After about a week, I was able to sleep away from the boys.

I guess the Lord was preparing me to let them go.  It's funny how something like where you sleep in your home can be a life lesson.  Even if everyone has to sleep in the same room, it is teaching you a lesson.  I am thankful for the years we had here in the trailer and for all the lessons I learned while living here.  (Look closely among the trees and you will see our little green trailer.)