We kicked off the home edit this summer with the “triple flip” of bedrooms and offices upstairs. It signaled a lot of things — rethinking how we use our space, giving the girls more autonomy and decision-making skills, and ultimately — the end of an era. We started with this room, and it’s on my mind tonight as I sit here waiting for Jane’s birthday cake to cool so that I can frost it. Tomorrow she will be seven and I think, finally, it’s time for this little room to tell its story.
—
I really didn’t think much of it until the first roll of clean white paint started to cover up the polka dots, what this room had come to mean to me. Jane’s old bedroom. The nursery. The toddler room. The tiny girl’s first bedroom. A lot has happened within these four walls — hard nights with wailing babies, sweet giggles playing Barbies on the floor, what feels like millions of bedtime stories, and all the other things in between. This room has seen the full range of human emotion. It’s also been the room where I have poured my heart and soul out to God in the wee hours of the morning, and it’s been the room where He has answered me again, and again, and again.
We moved to this house because we knew that we wanted another baby, and we knew immediately that this room was going to be the nursery. I wasn’t ready then, but eventually, every time I would walk past it I felt a little more empty — like something was missing. Like someONE was missing, and that’s how we knew it was time to do something about it. This empty room was sitting in wait.
I have been pregnant three times since we moved here, and I have had one baby. They call them “rainbow babies” I think, the ones that come after the ones that aren’t meant to be. It’s strange, because although I knew that I was in the very early stages of pregnancy with each loss, the only emotion I felt was “not yet – this wasn’t the one.” There was no rage. No anger. No sadness. No confusion. No self-recrimination. Only calm. I just knew, somewhere deep in my soul, that she wasn’t here yet, and that eventually she would be. “For this child I have prayed” does not begin to do justice to what this room has seen.
And then Jane.
After a difficult pregnancy my doctor told me during the semi-emergency C-section that she would be my last one. I was OK with that. Again, no sadness. No sense of loss. Acceptance. Gratitude. Peace. Because I knew that she was the one — the rainbow. The one we were meant to have. The one that this little room had been patiently waiting for.
As I stood back and took this picture, scrubbing away the tears rolling down my cheeks — I felt a step change happen. She doesn’t need this little room anymore. She’s outgrown it, because she is HERE, and we are complete.
As we usher in this new era of pre-teens and big girl rooms, this room ushers in its own new era too. I think it still has plans for us. New dreams. New prayers. I don’t know what will happen, or when — but I know who does. And this room will hold its new secrets until then.
New eras. New stories. New joys and heartaches and life to be loved.
If only these walls could talk.
The Real Busy Lizzie 