dream home
The inspiration for this blog stems largely from the idyllic images of home that resonate in my memory. Even given my bent towards perpetual optimism, it’s difficult not to glorify my childhood. I grew up across the street from a dairy farm, in a home creatively managed by a mother who gardened, sewed, cooked, cleaned, crafted, parented and entertained with contagious flair and little inhibition.
I now find myself striving to create a home that is full of the warmth and laughter and good taste that surrounded my formative years– for my children, for my husband, for myself, for our guests. I want my home to envelope people into all its charm and chaos, whether they want to simply come and be part of our process or sit long hours and converse.
Most days I enjoy this adventure in home-making, this crafting of abode. But then there are days when life seems too complicated, or too wearisome, and I long to be nine, and barefoot, and racing my sisters to the mailbox, despite the fact that I always finish last. I yearn for the smell of chlorine and damp cotton against my cheek as I listen to peepers and drift off to sleep after an evening swim. And, really, what wouldn’t I do to regularly walk through my front door and be met by the aroma of chocolate chip cookies wafting through the house?
And yet, as I endeavor to create this home of my ideals, I am discovering more and more that my striving will be merely work, a performance that at some point ends (at which point the real Annie, off camera, burns out or melts down or snaps) if my home is something I am creating in the space around me, but not in the space within me.
One of the wisest women I know recently pointed out to me that in Scripture, when Abraham’s beloved Sarah died, he choose not to return home for her burial (as would be culturally and historically expected in this time grief). Instead, he opted to lay her body to rest in the promised land, even though he owned none of it at the time of her death. She challenged me to consider where my home is, to identify the places I run to in times of grief and discouragement. Do I run to the past? To my ideals? Or do I, like Abraham, run to the promises of God and truth of His Word? Here I find real hope. Actual peace. Joy. Comfort.
Like the great patriarch, the home that I’m really longing for is one whose architect and builder is God, not one marked simply by good taste or reminiscent of my childhood. As I find myself at home in Him, I am able to rest and work and live fully, and those around me are warmly welcomed to come and enjoy that rest and work and life right alongside me. This is the home I long for. My dream home.
