a table called faithful.

on my way to the feed store, i delightfully stumbled upon a garage sale. a real one! not one of those antique stores mascaraing as a garage sale, chuck full of overpriced sentimentality. but a real nickel and dime garage sale. with beautiful, old smelly books and boxes of aged wonders.

she said it was all her dad's old stuff, from a time long before hers. most of it from his old barn. it didn't suit her house anymore, she was going for more of a nautical theme.

i bought a dresser, an apple box, seven baskets, a whole box of salt and pepper shakers, a trunk, three pictures, an old window, a framed barn shingle, an antique hand warmer and an ink well for, wait for it... $80! i had overestimated the amount of car space my unexpected visit had demanded but squeezed every last trinket in with barely enough room to shift. and then i saw something i couldn't forget. not even after i pulled out of the driveway, not while i shopped at walmart and picked up the feed.

and so, i was forced to go back, with my fingers crossed that it hadn't been sold. and there it was, sitting at the back of their garage with a piece of green painters tape with $100 written on it. way out of our imaginary garage sale budget and against my garage sale code of ethics of never spending more than $50 on any piece for sale in someone's driveway. but it was absolutely extraordinary. it was nicked and dented, coffee cup stained and paint splattered, burn marks and a HUGE hole right in the middle. it was a table. a table that hadn't been manufactured or artificially distressed. it was purely a product of a long, unlavished life. i couldn't make a table like that any other way.

i bought it. i had to make an extra trip to pick it up, with seriously lacking space from my first visit. and on my way home from picking up my prized treasure, i was trying to justify the cost in my head to steve. and i was going over how you can't buy this kind of aged perfection in a store. think of all the things this table has seen and lived through. it's not a fake. it's just so real. and then it came to me. i'll name it faithful. a table called faithful.

because even through all the bumps and banging of life, it stayed together. it just reminded me so much of God's faithfulness. just an ever present unyielding. it never disintegrated. it's legs stood solid. it has a huge hole in them middle but never mind that. more than that... it's absolutely, exquisitely beautiful and completely unreproducible. that table holds a story that only that table lived. a product of time tested over and over again.

and so this table has become a remembrance alter to the Lord's faithfulness. He is and has and ever will be faithful, ever true. ol' faithful now sits in our entry way and everyone notices it. a living piece testifying, reminding, proving.

may the story of the Father's faithfulness to me be written on every door posts we have.