A Dream Fulfilled

Excerpt#24 from Life is Short but Wide

Our home in the outskirts of Quito 1998, taken shortly after moving in.

Our social interactions expanded as the children matured and we could leave them at home. We enjoyed participating in a marriage support group in our Spanish church. The group included those with faith and those without, couples whose marriages were shaky and those with strong marriages. We played games, ate meals together, and encouraged each other. In addition, Tim and I were invited to a dinner club of five or six expat couples. Once a month we met in someone’s home. The host created the menu and asked others to contribute specific dishes, an appetizer or a salad or a dessert. It was a great way to get to know people and share a convivial evening. When it was our turn to host, I prepared two large Black Forest cakes for dessert. There was a lot of cake left over and the next morning I told the children, “Cake for breakfast!” Ashley was horrified at the thought of such an unhealthy breakfast and ate some granola first, but everyone else dove straight into the cake.

One evening we enjoyed dinner on a rural property about 15 minutes from the hospital where the owners were building a home. Even unfinished the house was lovely, spacious but practical. Outside, the air was fresh with the tang of eucalyptus. On our way home Tim and I began talking about building our own home. Pros and cons. Exciting. A couple of days later Tim came home saying he’d spoken with a colleague who was leaving Ecuador in two weeks. They had built a home, and it wasn’t yet sold. We drove out to look at the house. If we bought it, we could avoid the hassle of construction. Our lifestyle would change. There would be much more driving as the house was a 30-minute drive from work and school. What pleased me was all the open space around the house, with potential for a garden, a trampoline, a basketball hoop, and more. The kids were thrilled. We bought it using the funds we had banked after the sale of our rental house in Prince George.

The house was very much a mid-western USA style with a gigantic kitchen/dining room, a large living room, three bedrooms on the main floor with a main bath and an ensuite, plus a large unfinished upstairs. A wide covered porch stretched across the front of the house. High ceilings indoors contributed to the airiness. A two-car carport with an adjoining shop made Tim’s eyes light up. Three lemon trees stood in the sun-drenched yard, and avocado trees grew on other empty properties in the compound of four houses, providing plenty of fruit for everyone.

We moved in over the Carnaval weekend in February, just two weeks after purchase. Cristal and Travis were away on Christian Service Outreach trips. Ashley helped us move and we worked like crazy over the holiday weekend to get settled. Tim began hammering, measuring, and fixing like a man driven. Over the next weeks and months, he and Travis built a bedroom and bathroom upstairs for Travis to use and installed windows and doors into the unfinished shop space. I loved the house. Birds twittering and chirping were music to my ears. I looked out my back windows and saw only fields and distant houses. In the empty lot beside us a laburnum tree drooped its golden chains over the fence.

Several months previously I had written an article for a Christian woman’s magazine called Just Between Us. I wrote about my dreams dying. The article was written and published not long before we purchased our home. “The future lies ahead of me, shrouded in mist,” I wrote. “Do I visualize it as a gray gloom symbolizing a plodding existence, or do I see the light shining beyond the haze, bright with possibilities despite the loss of my dream, because God is there? Will I allow God to take my dream and use it to change me? The choice is mine.” To have my dream of a home of my own fulfilled so soon after it seemed to have died completely was amazing to me. One evening I walked over to speak with a neighbour. As I returned, I saw the broad porch with chairs, hammocks, and potted plants. Fresh cool air surrounded me. Lights shone through the windows, and I saw my lovely family moving through the rooms. Contentment and gratitude welled up inside of me, and I could only say, “thank you, God.”

Our daily routine did change. We all went into Quito together early in the morning, leaving at 7 am. My classes were in the morning, so I would take the city bus home afterwards, often popping into Tim’s office for a quick hello. The bus was a rattly affair, noisy and smelly with diesel exhaust. Holes in the floor of the bus sometimes allowed me to see the road passing by underneath. When it neared our stop, I got up and went to the front, coins for my fare in hand. One paid at the end of the ride rather than at the beginning. I waited for traffic before crossing the busy highway, then walked along the dusty road for a short kilometre before entering through the gated property.

How lovely it was to walk through the gate to my own home.