Thought Picnic: It's Goodbye to Oostelijke Handelskade 1121

Those many losses

I cannot say which loss has affected me the most; the loss of my job, the loss of my health, or the loss of my home, each compounding the other in order and yet, I am still standing.

It has not been easy at all, and today, exactly 10 and a half years after I took the keys to my apartment, I handed the keys not to the agent but directly to the young couple who have now come into possession of it, just like the couple who sold the place to me did in 2001.

I took them on a tour, showed them a few essential things, and gave some advice about the upkeep, the need for good neighbourliness, and something about what made my home a wonderful place to live in all those years.

Not a boring moment

Of all the losses I have suffered, my health took the greatest battering and it is the one that has now made a most remarkable and miraculous recovery.

For everything else, where there is life and good health, there is hope and with hope, you can find a new job and maybe get to own a home again.

If anything, when I look back over the 46 years of my life, there has never been a boring moment, it has been an amazing unfolding drama of living, for richer and for poorer, in little and in plenty, in sickness and in health, in blessing and in misfortune, in miracles and in catastrophe [It is like life’s marriage vows of a single man] but one thing remains – I have had God on my side, good in my life and goodness from so many people that I have very little time to grumble when it is positively occupied with being thankful.

My safety and thankfulness

As I closed the door to my apartment yesterday on the last full day of my living there, I thanked God for giving me such a beautiful place, everyone who visited always commented about the view which looked unto two harbours from the seventh floor – it was a refuge, a fortress, a castle with the formidable crenellations, I felt really safe there when it seemed the whole world was against me.

I remember a few years ago when the side-effects of a particular medication created feelings of acute claustrophobia that every room seemed too small, as I stepped into my living room, I meditated on Jesus being all the space I needed knowing that if I stepped out of my home I may never return and though my consultant could not allude to why the side-effects took hold, soon I was fine and safe where I always was.

To recover with interest

As the search for a new place to call my own commences, I have through the grace of wonderful people found a place for my independence from where I hope to recuperate, rejuvenate, reaffirm and recover the many things I have lost with interest.

I had to write this because it was goodbye to my wonderful home on Oostelijke Handelskade in Amsterdam.

I am still standing and I intend to win.