I’m a sucker for abandoned buildings. I want to hug them. I want to whack down weeds, plant flowers, fix the roof, paint the exterior, refurbish the interior. I want to change them from abandoned and unwanted to cherished.

I can’t explain it. I don’t know why neglected, unwanted shacks exert such a strong pull on me.

When I was living under a bridge in the back of my pickup truck I viewed every abandoned structure I spotted as a potential home. Why did no one live there? Why couldn’t I live there? How much money would it cost to buy it? To rent it? I would stare at it longingly and imagine what color I would paint it. I would note what repairs it needed and calculate how much it would cost and which damage I could repair on my own. I was pretty good with a hammer and I loved colors and painting.

Since then, I’ve owned a home. I helped build our house in Texas, even climbing up a metal extension ladder to the roof with 80-pound bundles of shingles over my shoulder. I painted our home inside and out with a paintbrush. I collected truck loads of flat rocks and did the rockwork around it. I built semi-circular stone steps up to the porch.

And, yet…I am bemused by abandoned buildings.

Now, here in Scotland, I live in a small, comfy rental house—which I also painted with a paintbrush, scaling a metal ladder to cut a nice straight line around the top of the exterior walls.

Still…unwanted structures whisper to my heart.

When my young son Luke and I lived in the Nevada desert, we loved visiting ghost towns and wandering through the empty buildings imagining the people who used to live there and the dreams—now broken, shattered dreams—that motivated them.

Now Luke is in his forever home. I’ll be joining him soon. This earth is not our home. We are just sojourners passing through. Even the bodies we live in down here on earth will be abandoned. Our bodies are mere shells that will be left here when our spirits rise to be with Jesus in Heaven where we will get new bodies.

So why am I a sucker for abandoned buildings? It must be empathy or compassion toward the former residents who stepped out of broken dreams and left them behind. No one likes broken dreams. It’s a comfort to know that Jesus promised that He was leaving this earth to return to Heaven and make a place for us there so we could follow Him.

And, yet…I’m a sucker for old buildings and broken dreams.

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