Is it simply where you live?
Is it where you feel home?
How tangible is the word home?
For me, home is all of the above. A house, an apartment, a car, a park bench may be where a person resides permanently or temporarily, though that may not truly constitute a home. Home is also a feeling. I currently live in a house, though I long for the feeling of my own home again.
For several months now, my family has been (gratefully) living with family as we build a new home. There are challenges and blessings that accompany this decision and some days are harder than others. Because this is the home I married from, it is in a sense my home too, though I feel very foreign here at times. There is something to be said of having a family home for your individual family. I know there are situations where people make joint-family living a long term choice. But for the most part here in America, I would say that families generally live in individual units. It is a nice arrangement. For several reasons, I personally feel this is the ideal.
- parents form the "head" of the household and are joint partners in making overall decisions for the home and family
- fathers, though generally employed and absent much of the time, form the solid fortress of protection of the home, patriarchs and providers and the "hero" who returns each day
- mothers reign in their own realm as hostess and matriarch of the family, content in a domain where their tastes, expertise and personal behaviors create a place of safety, comfort and stability for the entire family
- children have a known place in the home and are comfortable residents within their own spaces where routines, rules, activities and social status create a security found no where else on earth
We are expecting our third child (a girl!) in just a few short weeks and were recently informed that our house is to be completed almost a month after her arrival. We are so excited to bring home this new baby, though not to our own home as we had hoped. Because of this, I am trying desperately to carve out a home-within-a-home where we will still have a separate space to call our own in the coming months. For us, that means a single bedroom, a maybe 12 foot by 12 foot space where the four, almost five of us sleep. As the rest of the house is shared by everyone, it has become increasingly important to me to make our space work for our needs. Still, this bedroom is mainly for sleeping and I have found it very helpful to take small trips with the kids and get "out of the house" occasionally for our family time and to give my family the space they need. I am looking so forward to having our home again and giving both families a much-needed return to normal home life.
With this, I return to the definition as to what constitutes a home. As far as what feels like home, I have begun to notice an interesting phenomenon. Our home that is being built already feels like home though it is in reality studs and concrete, some nails and beams. Each time I am near our home I am pulled in by some magnetic force and I have to drive past it, look at it, feel it, and more often than not, stop and walk through it, touch it, bond with it. Yes, I have already bonded with it. Even in its partially-built state, even though we have no ownership other than the money we have put down on it, even though we don't live there yet, it is our home in every sense possible. Home is a beautiful feeling and it is becoming something I crave each day, often many times throughout the day. It has become habit to drive over each morning to see the building progress and take pictures only to return a few hours later for another update, more pictures, another glimpse at the house that will become our own and a desire to linger....as long as possible....and never leave...
Home is so precious. I am so grateful to our God for giving us the blessing of families and homes on this earth. I am grateful that this follows a heavenly pattern of our families and homes on High. I know that we came to earth from a previous home and that everyone will someday "return home" and what a comfort that is. I know that our Father in Heaven smiles down on families as they do the hard work each day of creating a home that is like His. He is grateful to his sons who work hard to make this possible for their families, providing, protecting and presiding in the home. And he is grateful to his daughters, women young and old, who nurture and love and do the hard work of turning a house into a home.
Because no matter where the world tries to pull us in these modern and confusing times, this is where our calling is, we are women choosing home.
