Letting The Light In Pt. 2

Chase & Tito arrived the next day & successfully dropped the last of the three pines. Gavin & I worked nearly every day to clean up the remains of those giants, one wheelbarrow load of branches at a time. The fire burned for a week straight, through all that rain, it continued smoldering with thick plumes of white smoke nearly up until his birthday.

But this post isn’t really about the trees, it’s about something more than that. It’s about light. Its task is to illuminate, to cast brightness into dim spaces. It offers a sense of warmth, transparency & security. It diffuses the darkness until only certainty remains.

Light was a commodity I avidly chased when we first moved in. Each space was cloaked with heavy shadows due to the limited electric run in the house. Lamps plugged in across the room meant stepping through those shadows first before turning the knob. And when nighttime arrived, it brought with it complete and total blackness. It encompassed and consumed the last glimmers of light like a hungry mouth swallowing everything whole. I couldn’t see my hand if I held it an inch from my face.

Venturing into that at 3:00 am was not something I looked forward to. I slept with a battery-powered lantern by my side. It was my best companion while Gavin was fast asleep and I was alone with the house, braving the journey down the hallway.

It felt different then. With no one living in the home for over three years before we moved in, it was inhabited by both unwelcome animals and a realm we couldn’t see. The latter still causes me to wonder. I suppose there’s mysteries unable to be solved on this side of heaven, but I’ll share with you a couple.

Sounds of heavy boots trudging down the hall reverberated into my pillow. Lying there wide-eyed in the blackness, I froze and listened. Faint, old-timey music could be heard in the stillness of the night coming from downstairs. It was very tricky though. I’d turn off our fan to listen more closely and it would stop. I’d turn on the fan again, crawl back in bed and again it carried on. And it was just audible enough for me to question my sanity, like a muffled beat to a song I couldn’t place. This same instance happened to my mom while spending the night. Her shared experience assures me that I wasn’t going crazy.

If you’d ask me what I really thought, I’d tell you my conclusion. . . over 200 years of life lived in this home including servitude, births, deaths and all of the accumulated characteristics of each passing era, has left a certain energy in the air. It’s like stepping back in time. And from the start of taking on this project, Gavin & I vowed to respect the history of this property. Its age is a rare attribute that few homes possess.

As new inhabitants of the house, I suppose whatever you want to say was there, kept a keen watch over me. Unseen eyes followed me like a stranger I couldn’t avoid. At first, I was uncomfortable being there alone. It was a fear I had no choice but to overcome. I was alone every single day last summer, working on the house until Gavin arrived home in the evening. I remember talking to my brother on the phone one afternoon. “You know, Katie, I’ve watched shows about how just one antique can cause a haunting,” he went on, “And imagine all of the hundreds of antiques, along with the age of the house . . . there’s just gotta be something there.” I stood on the patio staring at the closed back door daring me to enter. “Thanks, Matt, that makes me feel a lot better.” Finally regaining my courage to go back inside to continue working, it felt even more ominous and eerie. The mind has a funny way of turning every creak or shadow into something more.

Whether those instances were real or imagined, I didn’t want the house to feel like that. I wanted it to be a space filled with peace. When Matt visited shortly after, I asked him to pray over the house and I did as well on different occasions, all oddly enough, in the dining room. Certain places in the house have different feelings and that room always seemed dark. That veil has lifted since and now it’s one of my favorite places to be.

And as we worked physically on the house, installing lights and putting in the window in the bathroom, it became visibly brighter and more welcoming. I no longer grip tightly to a lantern at night (even though my walk to the bathroom is currently downstairs instead of down the hall). And removing the Austrian pine trees in the front have added to the house’s beauty. Light pours in from the windows in the dining room and kitchen. Little by little, it feels like a weight has been lifted. The house is being restored every day into a place of harmony.

As I look around at what we’ve accomplished so far, I hope the original owners that built this home would be happy with our work, and I think they are. The darkness has lifted & in every sense of the word, it feels good to let the light shine in.

P.s. If you’re still wondering if we hear any of those strange noises, I believe they’ve stopped. The only thing that remains are occasional swooshes of light that cross our bedroom window outside at night. Gavin & I have lied awake watching these white wisps take shape of people walking or carriages passing by. Or, maybe they’re just headlights of cars driving down the road. I’ll leave that one up to you, dear reader.