If This Couch Could Talk

Tonight was our last time to sit on our couch and watch a show together.  This is because we are giving away our sixteen year-old living room furniture to another family.  (Don’t worry, we saved up to buy a new couch and it arrives on Friday.  It’s a fun couch and I am sure it will be great, but tonight I am melancholy about saying goodbye to our old couch). 

I think I shared the story of this furniture before, but it’s a tale worth re-telling.  You see, over sixteen years ago, when we were about to be married, we saw this couch and chair at Pier One.  We loved it immediately and hoped that we could maybe purchase it after we got married. 

Fortunately, my grandmother gave us one thousand dollars as a wedding gift to be put towards buying furniture.  At that time, I think the couch was $700 and the chair was $300.  With a few other generous cash gifts tucked in wedding cards, we were able to purchase the set right after moving into our apartment in Lexington, KY as newlyweds. 

Bill would be starting med-school and the plan was for me to find a job.  Unfortunately, a job did not fall into my lap the minute I arrived in Lexington.  Days turned into weeks and after we paid our rent, we had about $30 to our name for the foreseeable future.  I began to panic.  How would we eat??  Didn’t God know that I needed a job?  I had a good interview for a job, but even if they hired me, I wouldn’t get a paycheck for another 3 weeks.  We estimated that we would need about $300 to pay our bills and eat until I could get paid. 

Of course I prayed (rather impertinent prayers which involved reminding God of our dwindling bank account).  Then, one evening, I received the strangest phone call.  It was from the manager at Pier One where we had bought our furniture several weeks before.  He told me that they had just implemented a significant sale price on that particular furniture and had we waited a few weeks, we would have paid a lot less.  He said if we’d come into the store, he’d love to give us some money back. 

What???  Who does that?  How did he even get our phone number? (We had paid cash for the furniture.)  So, we went into the store thinking maybe he’d give us $50 or something.  Instead, he counted out three hundred dollars into our eager little hands. 

$300.

You’ll remember that’s exactly what we needed to survive until I got paid.  It’s like God knew that or something.

And so began our relationship with this miracle furniture.

This couch and chair are in so MANY of our family photographs.  Our cat scratched it up early on which made us crazy because it was brand new!  I spilled hot chocolate all over it a year later when I was serving friends as a new wife. 

This is the couch we snuggled on after long days of work and medical school.

This is the couch we sat on to talk with new friends and visiting family.

This is the couch we moved from our first apartment into our condo.

This is the couch we sat on to fold laundry, watch Friends, read together, and talk about our future.

This is the couch where we sat for our first Christmas card photo—the one before kids—the one with the dog and the cat.

This is the couch where we spooned.

This is the couch we sat on when we brought home our first baby.  

This is where I nursed her, burped her, and snuggled her while I watched The Today Show.

 

This is the couch where Bill held me while I listened to our newborn cry herself to sleep.  (It took 5 minutes, but felt like 50.)

This is the couch where all of our parents sat at one time or another.

This is the couch that made the move to Houston after Bill finished medical school.

 

It’s the couch we sat on with boxes piled around us in the living room of the very first house we ever bought.

This is the couch Aunt Linda laid on when she came to babysit Abbey while we went to the hospital to have Alexis.

This is the couch we had three-year-old Abbey sit on to hold her new baby sister. 

This is the couch where two sisters giggled and snuggled and jumped and watched Dora and Curious George.

This is the couch where we unfolded a deep friendship with Steve and Diana.  

This is the couch we sat on for pictures with the Maciceks as we added girl after girl to the gang. 

This is the furniture we used for Sunday night meetings with our church community group. 

This is the furniture that made the move from Houston to Nashville (even though it was ten years old).

This is the couch we sat in with boxes piled around us in the second home we ever owned.

 

This is the couch where we sat to open Christmas gifts, and birthday gifts, and surprise gifts.  

This is the couch where Alexis laid with a trash can near by incase she threw up again.

This is the couch where we sat and watched movies with new friends.

This is the furniture that made the move across town, served faithfully in the “rental house” and then moved yet again to the blue house—up the stairs to the “bonus room” because it wasn’t the only furniture we owned anymore. 

But this is still where we sit to watch movies.  This is still the couch that gets napped on and made into forts.

This furniture has seen tears and spills and spit-up and cookie crumbs and cat scratches and knitting needles and wrapping paper and champagne dribbles and accidental pen-marks during Bible Study and sprained ankles and story time and photo bombs and chocolate stains and sticky fingers and lost change and whispered dreams and secret fears and friends made and betrayal confessed and uncontrollable laughter and dance parties and so 

much 

life.

I think that’s why I am sad.  This furniture—this thousand dollar blessing has been such a huge part of our married life.  I can’t believe we are saying goodbye. 

However, the furniture is being picked up by a new family who is willing to take on this well-loved (aka filthy and torn) furniture.  The new owner tells me it is for their bonus room above the garage.  I get the feeling they are a young family—so maybe the couch will witness new friends being made, new kids being brought home.  Or, hey! This is Nashville, so maybe some young guitar player will strum out a hit song while sitting on that couch in the room above the garage. 

I don’t know exactly what this miracle furniture will experience next, but I know it served its purpose well in our family.  Tomorrow it will exit the blue house a little battered and tattered and worn—yet richly appreciated and never forgotten.

Maybe I’m getting a little too sentimental about furniture, but I just learned that we can all strive to exit each season of life in a similar fashion: having done our job well, maybe a bit tired and tattered, but hopefully appreciated and never forgotten.