This Old House

“For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope” -Jer. 29:11 Change can be so difficult. When the “old normal” is replaced by the “new normal”, it doesn’t feel normal at all! This past week, we moved my mom from Fort Worth to Branson. She is 89 and we have no family left in Fort Worth, so we’re glad she is here and safe. But it shuts the door to the Staples family connection to Fort Worth. And as we put the “Home place” up for sale, we move on to a new chapter. The old house will be missed. It was the “training ground” for the Staples family for nearly 50 years. But we trust the God has great plans for the future. In summer 1967, Pelham Staples loaded up his wife, four boys and Cocker Spaniel and moved them from Montgomery, Alabama back to Fort Worth, Texas where they’d lived four years earlier. Dad had been in the Air Force for 22 years and was stationed at various bases around the world. I was born in Germany and my three brothers at military bases around the U.S.. But this stop in Fort Worth would be the final chapter in the Staples family history. We loved our life on the bases. My mother was always secure in the four boys living inside of the heavily guarded SAC bases and my dad enjoyed the medical structure of military medicine. But when my dad “retired” from the Air Force, he kept on practicing medicine in Fort Worth and we grew up in the real world. I’m sure the adjustment was difficult for the family. There was no longer a barbed wire fence to protect us from the outside world. We lived in an awesome home in a new neighborhood. And the house was full of the lives of this large family. Over the years, we added on to the house and changed some of the landscape, but the home stayed relatively the same. Under the roof of that beautiful home, all four boys would experience life. We would have slumber parties in the bedrooms, have countless football games in the backyard, all finish out high school, come home for visits from college, decide on our careers, make our brides a part of the family, and share our home with a bunch of grandkids. Mom and Dad Staples would eventually retire and enjoy only a few brief years of time together before my dad passed away. That home would be a place of grieving for my mom and for the whole family as well. And then a whole new generation of grandkids and great-grandkids would come to play in that huge backyard. The trend today, in the neighbor where we grew up, is to tear down the old houses and rebuild new houses on the attractive lots. Our house is pretty battered and old, but the home will never go away. They may indeed tear down the house, but the Staples home continues in the families of the grandkids and great- grandkids. After all, houses are built on lots; homes are built on family; houses are made of wood, homes are made of security and trust; houses are filled with furniture, homes are filled with love; houses wear away, homes always remain. Thank you God for that beautiful home in Fort Worth. As we prepare to pass it on, I am thankful for the legacy of the family of Pelham Staples. It was and is a home built on integrity, honesty, hard work and faith. I am honored to be a part of that family. My dad, and two of my brothers, Pelham Jr. and Marc, have passed on. But the legacy lives on. Thank you Lord for our beautiful old house… …but thank you more for our wonderful home. By Eric Joseph Staples © www.lifeaid101.com