To All the Rugs I’ve Loved
a writing prompt for you
Welcome to Writing in Company. This is a community for you, whatever your experience with writing. It’s an invitation to write about what matters—grief, gratitude, grace, and more. Each week I share some ideas and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft a writing project, as prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. If this one doesn’t resonate, look back through the archive for more.
In an off-kilter world, using our words can help us stay centered and move through despair toward healing and wholeness. Writing in company with others saved me once. Let’s keep writing now, alone and together, and trust our words to help us see and say what matters.
One of the adventures and challenges of our dual-clergy, dual-denomination ministry life is a lot of moving around. Since our marriage, my husband and I have lived in ten different homes, ranging from a few months in a temporary rental to eight years in a home we owned. Of those ten homes, six have been parsonages, owned by the churches he served. There were also two houses we bought and sold, an apartment, and that rental home we lived in while one parsonage was worked on. We are in a parsonage now, and still getting settled.
No doubt you have some experience with moving, and trying to fit your old things into new configurations. Different numbers of rooms, different sizes, different needs of the family. In parsonage-land there is also some furniture already in the house, so you have to navigate yours, theirs, and what to do with the leftovers.
For the past few days, when I’m not working on a hurricane relief project, writing prayers for a contracted project, or doomscrolling keeping up to date on the demise of our democratic republic, I’ve been trying to figure out a rug quandry in our bedroom. Thanks to the church, we’ve got new flooring there. But now we need a rug. We’ve got two still rolled up because we haven’t found the right space in this house for them. Neither fits the bedroom. Spending the least amount of money possible on a good enough rug seems the way to go right now.
Shopping online, I see versions of rugs we’ve had and loved before.
Some look like the braided rugs that went in our second parsonage—green in the den, blue in the bedroom, and a lavender one for the nursery. I rocked and nursed and cried and grieved on those rugs. Church mice chewed up a couple of them. One ended up in the huge walk-in attic of the first house we bought. The German couple that built it included shelves and storage and two levels in the attic. I was amused when she pointed to one cubby and said in all seriousness: “This is where you hide when the Nazis come.” I’m not as amused today…. We sold that house, my tastes changed, and those rugs are long gone.
Some look like the good wool rug we bought for the first house we owned, more expensive than any before or since, but truly the best rug ever. It’s made a home in four houses so far. It’s a grown-up rug. Unrolling it in this house led to a pulled back and days of pain, but it continues to be worth it.
Some look like the cheap rug I bought during the pandemic for the second house we owned, because an online influencer called it “magic” and it’s actually not bad. It’s got that faded vintage Persian look, and it works in many spaces. Just not where I need a rug now.
Some look like the large old wool rugs my parents have had as long as I can remember. In a store today they’d be called “vintage Oriental” and cost what a used car does. Growing up I trained my childhood dog to sit and lie down on one of those rugs. We posed for endless pictures on the corner of one of those rugs. We danced and played games and left our shoes and toys all over those rugs. Now, in the small apartment they’ve moved to, the rugs are being eaten by moths, despite every possible treatment. Every visit I notice more bare spots—a symbol of aging and the advance of time that I could write about for a long time.
And, because I’m thinking constantly about her—
Some look like the rugs my sister bought when she served USAID in Afghanistan during the war. To distract from the loneliness of leaving her family to serve our country and share humanitarian aid, to forget the day she and her colleagues hid in a tunnel while being shelled, and to invest in the local economy (because USAID workers do/did all those things), she made friends with the rug seller who came to the base. She drank dark rich coffee with him, and bought his gorgeous rugs for the homes she lived in later around the globe. While she’s staying put for now, all her other colleagues are preparing to roll up their rugs and leave the homes and work and goodwill that they’ve invested in.
If you are in the US, keep calling your representatives, if not about USAID, then about something. I’m using the app 5Calls, and it makes it quick.
a writing prompt
Make a list of rugs you have known and loved. Write a few memories about each one.
If you like, take a deep dive into one rug, and let your words unroll on the page.
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Scattered throughout our home are rugs from various countries where we have lived, including one from Afghanistan where my wife served for a year with USAID. There is also a picture she took of a young British officer and his dog. The soldier stepped on a land mine and was killed not long after, and his dog died of a broken heart in a matter of days. Our hearts break for what is happening to USAID and the consequences for countless persons whose lives are improved by the programs AID has offered.
No matter the topic, Julie, you bring such deep consideration and contemplation to my mind and heart. This is true with the rugs accounting. Thank you…for so much.