I Built an Altar
It's actually happening. We're moving. After 10 years. Our house in Chattanooga is under contract. We're buying a beautiful home in Oxford (with a porch). If everything goes according to plan, we'll be pulling out of our driveway by mid December.
It's exciting. A new adventure. And I guess there's a reason that the windshield is so much bigger than the rearview mirror. We're looking ahead. There's life and friends and stories and a calling to bring his kingdom in some new little way to Oxford. And I know that when we pull out of our driveway in Chattanooga for the last time, my heart will be full. As I glance back in the rearview mirror, it will be full of the sweetest memories:
Fires in my backyard with Young Life leaders, tackle football with my high school boys, campaigners in my living room, our best friends gathered around the island of our kitchen with a bottle of wine, the house where we brought home both of our babies, the last place I hugged my Dad on this side of heaven, life together with people with whom we'll live forever, sweet tears, sweeter laughter, deep conversations and so many answered prayers. A million memories.
And perhaps the memory I will hold most dear in my heart, as we pull out of E. Newberry St. for the last time … I'll look back in the rearview mirror, past the house, into the backyard and wave goodbye to … a treehouse.
Right after my Dad died I came home and decided I wanted to build a treehouse. Why a treehouse? I don't know. I wasn't much of a builder or anything. Maybe it's that I felt like I wasn't in the place to care for others hearts because mine was broken. Or maybe I just wanted to be a part of something for once that I could step back and look at at the end of the day, and think "It's complete." Ministry can be so hard some days, because people are always a work in progress. You can finish a treehouse.
But mostly I think it was just a quiet, small whisper from the Spirit of the living God. The Holy Spirit living in me. I made my plans to build a treehouse, but the Lord had laid out my steps. I thought I was building something temporary. For my girls. But He was building something in me. Something eternal.
I recruited my 3 college small group guys to help me. Jimi was the project manager. He was a construction management major, and he drew up the blueprints and figured out what we needed. Houston was the foreman. He had grown up building houses with his Dad and he led us in the actual building. I shelled out the cash and Gerry … Well Gerry was the grunt work. The manual labor.
We would wake up early almost every day in the winter of 2014. I'd build a fire in the backyard. The guys would stop at McDonalds and grab me coffee and then we would start building. I learned a ton about construction, but I learned more about how to live life with people in the middle of grief. Some of the sweetest conversations in my life happened when we were building that treehouse. We prayed and worshiped and laughed and cried and dreamed … together. As we were building this treehouse, God was resurrecting something in me.
After building almost everyday that winter … One night, I found myself hanging out on the deck of the treehouse with my buddy Bryan Meeker. It was cold out, and there were no walls or a roof (just studs). Staring up into the stars, we laughed and went back and forth telling stories from our college days at Union University. And that night God gave me the sweetest picture. A thought that told a story. A story that I will always store up in my heart.
I remembered a lesson I had learned from Camille's art professor Lee Benson. Lee is one of the most amazing, godliest men I've ever met. He's authentic and he loves Jesus with a fierce love. I remembered him telling his art students, "When God does something significant in your life. A marker. Something that shapes or changes you: you should go out into the wilderness and build an altar. An ebenezer. So that you can always return to it and remember what God has done in you." As I sat there telling that story to Meeker, I began to weep and I could barely speak. I realized that I hand't just been building a treehouse. I had built an altar.
This is Lee Benson. Camille's art professor. And our dear friend.
I mean I didn’t set out to do that. It just happened. I thought I was building it for my girls. That it would be a place for them to dream, and have sleepovers, and live out adventures that could only happen outside of this world. But for me it was more than that. That season of life hadn't been about the finishing a project. It was an act of worship to thank God for giving me my Dad.
And so much life has come out of his death. My Younglife boys claimed that treehouse as their own. They named it the Tabernacle, and it became a place of refuge and hope for them. I sat with high school guys in that treehouse night after night and watched them believe deeper in the gospel, in the person of Jesus, and in the power of prayer. I sat with kids in that treehouse and prayed with them as they gave their hearts to Christ and believed for the first time. Eyes were opened and hearts were healed. I found healing for my heart in a season of suffering, and hope in a season of loss. It had become holy ground. Built on the foundation of the love of a father. The perfect love of a Heavenly Father and the extravagant love of an earthly one.
And when I drive away from our house for the last time in a couple weeks, I won't just see a tree house in my rearview mirror. I'll see an altar. And I’m so thankful.
