The Garage
Something that is hard for me to do is to acknowledge when a seemingly little thing upsets me more than I think it should! I’ve been learning, however, that these little things usually carry a big chunk of emotions behind them that I have to work through. If I continue to ignore these heart emotions, I end up avoiding my feelings and trying to cover them over with obsessive thinking. I believe this was the major contributor to my struggling with an eating disorder in my teen years. For me now, this covering over means ruminating thoughts which anxiously call to me repeatedly in my mind. It’s like having ants in my thinking, they run around all over and drive me crazy. It’s a mental diversion that carries a load of anxiety with it (tight feeling in my gut). But they don’t deal with the pain or grief or anger or whatever is going on in my heart.
I grew up in the same house where my parents still live. The house is a ranch style with an addition. Mom and Dad still live there.
Our garage was always detached from the house so that you had to go from the house to the carport (what we called it) via a brick walkway in between. There was also an enclosed room with a locking door that we called the “storage room.” In the storage room Dad kept his tools, his fishing tackle, our bikes, and an extra freezer and later my grandmother’s old refrigerator that had a particular smell when you opened it. The floor there was damp and if I went in there barefoot the concrete felt almost wet and a little bit slimy.
The garage was a gable roof with lots of open rafters – a ceiling was never added, and it became home to various pieces of lumber. Also among them was the childhood sled my dad made for us that was too heavy to glide on during the one big snow (of five inches!) that we got when I was about seven.
I have many memories of walking out to the carport to get in the car as a little girl to run errands with my mother.
This summer my mom and dad decided to knock down the carport, which they have been talking about doing for a while, and to build a new carport with covered walkway that would connect to the house. One morning I opened my phone to a text message with a picture of the razed storage room and bulldozed garage. There was just dirt! I wanted to cry and I was angry! To me as long as the garage was still there - all the memories of childhood trips, the family camper parked in the driveway, waiting for my mom to double check on something before we left for a visit to our grandparents - my memories were left intact and there was proof – REAL PROOF – that I had grown up in this house, that I had passed my childhood there running from the car to the house in the rain, trying to avoid the bees buzzing in our redbud tree on the way to the car, even playing under the roof of the garage on a rainy day when mom backed the cars out further towards the street.
THERE GOES MY CHILDHOOD, I texted to my parents and sister.
As usual when I’m trying to process something, I had a nightmare.
As I worked through the sadness and anger over losing the physical presence of my childhood comings and goings with my therapist, I began to realize that the garage with the brick driveway represented something deeper. I had just experienced the passing of my father-in-law a few months prior, having assisted in caring for him in the last stages of his life. The understanding that this could and eventually would happen to my own mom and dad had been on my heart. I couldn’t understand why a garage meant so much, but then I came to realize that not only did it represent my childhood, it also reminded me that one day my beloved parents would no longer be there either. No wonder I was sad and angry when the garage came down.
I’m thankful that God used my mom and dad’s picture of the garage to show me how I needed to face my feelings. I didn’t want to listen to my heart about how I felt about the garage. It seemed silly; after all, it was just bricks and a very messy, stinky storage room. I wanted to push this away and ignore it, but I’m glad that I didn’t. That garage mattered to me, my childhood mattered to me, and my parents matter to me beyond words.
Psalm 139:23 “Search me O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” (NLT)
-Catherine
Jesus’ Beloved Child. Lover of my Family. Joyful Singer. Creative Introvert. Art Lover. Lifetime Learner. Overcomer.
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