kitchen table

we got a new addition to the family this weekend.

a new kitchen table. well, not exactly new. some old friends of ours moved to south africa to be missionaries. so they literally sold all that they owned to move there. i mean everything. they were posting items on their facebook page and we saw their kitchen table. i fell in love with it. it's big and sturdy and looks perfect for our family. it looks like a table that's got character. it's got a story. and i love furniture with a story.

however, this has meant that our old kitchen table has been demoted and retired. i placed it outside our back kitchen door for the time being due to lack of a better place to store it. it looks very sad and banged up sitting out there. it looks like a table that's seen its better days. it's another piece of furniture with a story.

we got that little 6 chair table when our little family of 6 was still sitting in booster seats and eating off plastic barney plates and drinking out of sippy cups. now it is covered with spots of nail polish and glitter glue and permanent marker. it's been covered with a table cloth the majority of the time to hide all the hard living it's had to endure. when i flipped the thing over to take it outside, the underneath looked like it had a thousand unknown adventures that mom's of little ones are never aware of.

i thought about all that we've done at that table. there have been endless meals filled with loud conversations, laughter, pouting, and life lessons. there have been hours of homeschooling and endless nights of homework. there was an 18-month stint when matt was 2 and 3 years old we spent teaching him the importance of sitting in a chair and not on the table (i didn't think the boy would ever get it!)

it's been piled full of birthday goodies for slumber parties and held my new recipe experiments for dinner. it's been the dumping spot for mail and backpacks and wet swimsuits and bags of groceries. it's seen a thousand art projects and has had 30 gallons of glue spilt on it (i don't think that's an overexaggeration!) it's where j has paid the bills and gone over the family budget again and again trying to make ends meet for his ever growing family. it's where i've done my Bible study and journaled and dreamed and felt frustrated that my life seemed to be moving so slowly.

i also remember one cold, winter day after i was diagnosed with cancer. i had the laptop on that table doing research about pancreatic cancer. i remember how i laid my head down on that table top and wept as i read about my diagnosis and survival rates.

beauty and pain and joy and disappointment get kind of interwoven in our lives that way.

we broke our new table in the right way last night. we celebrated mandy's 9th birthday. her inaugural meal was kentucky fried chicken (it's what the kid wanted for her birthday dinner!) we ate and blew out candles and had her open her gifts. and i watched her sweet little face beam as each of us went around the table and told mandy what we appreciated about her and ways we have seen her grow this past year. it's one of our smolen family birthday traditions. it made for another memory that i'll lock up and put away.

i guess it's funny to get sentimental about furniture. maybe it's not the furniture but the memories. Lord willing, this table will see us through freshman year and turning 16 and graduation and paying college tuition and who to date (more importantly, who not to date). there will be lots of conversations about making wise choices and transitions and losses and life.

i love furniture with a story.