the house that built me

About an hour away from where I live now is the architect who designed my childhood home.


Set back on three acres on the shores of Indigo Lake in the woods of Magnolia, TX, my childhood home was captivating. A 2-story, white, Greek revival home with a lovely front porch and a back porch that looked out on green grass, tall pines, and lined up perfectly with the moon's reflection on the water, this house was the house where I wanted to get married and the home I wanted my kids to visit on long weekends with their grandparents.


My parents divorced at the beginning of my junior year of high school. My mom moved off first to Montgomery, TX then to Austin, TX, and has now recently returned to Montgomery. My dad stayed in that house until about 3 years ago, waiting for the right person and right time to sell. He now lives part-time in The Woodlands, TX and part-time on his boat.


Nearly a year and a half ago, I went back with a few friends from Dallas to Magnolia for an Ultimate tournament to support a child in my former youth group who needed medical assistance after falling out of a tree, resulting in paralysis of his legs. After the tournament, I drove my friends through my hometown, sharing stories of my childhood adventures and misadventures. We ended up at the same spot where I'd wait for the school bus, outside the gate where our family dog would run to get the newspaper each morning--the same dog we buried behind the garage that stood just a few hundred feet behind the iron gate where I now stood. I took a chance and pushed in the code to open the gate of my past...and it worked! The gate opened, and I drove in not really knowing why or what I was expecting.


Give me just a minute, guys. I need to at least try.


I knocked on the door and introduced myself to the woman who answered. Hi, this may be strange, but my name is Lydia Rudy. I grew up here.


She immediately invited me in.


A friend of mine recently told me that I would like Miranda Lambert's song House that Built Me. Listening to it on the radio today, I heard my own story from a year and a half ago:


I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it's like I'm someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I could just come in I swear I'll leave
Won't take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me


My mom sent me an email this week with the writings of Jill Carattini called The Right Side of Pain. In it, Carattini talks about how she spent a good portion of her life after her family fell apart reaching out to the broken and the hurting, the poor and the helpless, in an effort to make sure that no one felt alone in their hurting like she did when she was hurting. She bounced from community to community after she felt like she had done all she could, given all she had, exhausted her love and resources. She concluded by saying that where she went wrong was when she invited the broken into her house--a metaphorical house that was built on her own strength, a house that had yet to be fixed, a house that was not ready for company. She instead needed to begin inviting those same people into the house of God:


...A house built not by human hands, but held up by the beams of the cross. Here our souls find a house with rooms prepared for them and a table set with room for our enemies. God has invited us into the kingdom; the doors of a great house are opened wide. And it is a house where hospitality is not a conditional sharing of personal pains, or a self-centered preoccupation with suffering, but an extension of Christ's invitation: Come to me, all who are weary and I will give you rest.


I'm the type of person who carries her hurt with her wherever she goes. Before moving to North Carolina, I spent two years learning how to let go of the hurt and find strength in the vulnerability that came with letting go. Unlike Carattini, I've been drawn to helping people since I was a child. I once told my mom that I wanted to travel to the hardest places to do the hardest work. Still, I find myself seeking out those opportunities and wanting to flee when it got too hard. Lately, I've been wanting to flee from this camp, from the hardest boys and run to a safer camp in Georgia where it might be easier.

After a week of deep consideration and a week with a new group of boys, I've decided not to flee this time and to stay at my camp in North Carolina. Starting over with a fresh perspective, I need to let go of the house I've built around me and start living in the house of God, so that I can invite these kids into a stable home, one that won't fall apart around them, one that hold plenty of room for me and for them.