Thoughts About Home

Home. It's such a lovely word. The mere mention of it brings a smile to my face and calm to my heart... but why? What is it about "home" that is more endearing, more comforting than practically anyplace else on earth?

I've been away from home several times this summer, once to the coast on vacation and twice to Austin to help one of my daughters with Vacation Bible School and a second time to help get their new house ready for their upcoming move.

I thoroughly enjoyed each of those times, for with them came fun, laughter, fellowship, and even a sense of accomplishment. As much as I appreciated those weeks away and the opportunities to reconnect with precious family, it felt just as good to be coming home again when all was said and done.

Do you feel that way about your home too?

It's taken me a while to grow into this little casita of ours, our second honeymoon cottage - as we like to call it. We've been here for two-and-a-half years now, but I'm just beginning to feel like I belong. I'm getting accustomed to it... and it is getting accustomed to me. We are creating and banking memories together that are being woven into both the fabric of this place and the fabric of my heart.

Have I ever formally introduced you to her?

This little house originally belonged to my parents. They lived here nearly eighteen years after they made the move from the Abiso house (where I grew up) and we moved there. After my parents passed away, the house came to me. At the time, I wasn't ready to let it go. I was still mourning the loss of my folks and had no desire to upend anything of theirs. That's when God brought a lovely miracle of a plan into our lives.

Our son and daughter-in-law received an invitation to work at our church here in San Antonio, and as the church was just up the road on Austin Highway, this place became the perfect perch for them for the seven years they were here. After their move to Spring, Texas, to start a church there, we downsized to this little gem.

I don't know that I would ever have actively searched for a place like this, but the old gal won me over with her hardwood floors and her lovely woodwork... and the fact that she had been home to both my parents and one of my children.

She was built in 1942, and though small and unassuming, she is dolled-up with cross-panel doors and cut-glass doorknobs. The mint green and white geometric tile in the bathroom is original, and save for one small crack, still pristine. Outside, the windows are adorned with white, scallop-edged awnings that look a bit like eyelashes if you squint just right. At nearly eighty, she's still a looker... and a keeper, if I do say so myself!

In every room of this house I see objects passed down, reminders of dear family who have long ago graduated to glory. There's the red chair in the living room that belonged to Tom's dad, the mirror in the dining room from Granny Ruth's, the big bowl on the kitchen shelf that always brimmed with my Nana's potato salad. Here in this place the past and the present meld into one, and I love it.

On the side of the bedroom closet (the extension Mark and Laura constructed when they were the casita's caretakers) are small, narrow shelves that house an ever-growing arrangement of photographs of those near and dear to me. It's the first thing I pass when I exit the bedroom in the morning, and the last thing I see before closing out the day... the precious faces of those I am -and have been- so blessed and privileged to love in this life.

Home is the place that stands always at the ready to welcome me back. It's the familiar sink-in feeling of my favorite corner of the sofa, or a steaming mug of hazelnut coffee out on the deck early Saturday mornings. It's sleeping deep and well on sheets sun-dried and softened by the breeze. It's the scent of Old Spice aftershave and "Fall Farmhouse" candles lingering together pleasantly when Tom comes home from work.

There's no place quite like it, is there?

Here we feel accepted. Here we feel safe. Here the troubles of the world take a brief respite while we recover, re-energize. Here we are loved for who we are, warts and all. We can laugh with abandon and we can cry without judgment. Home is the place for all those things. It is our harbor... our refuge.

These thoughts of home, these ponderings, got me thinking about heaven. It's a place I long to be... some days more than others. Honestly, with the state of conditions in the world right now, I think about it a lot.

And it occurred to me.

It occurred to me that life, all of this life, is like those few weeks I spent away from home. Lots of it was pleasant, joy-filled, flat-out-fun! But. But there were also times when the stresses of driving on a crowded highway fraught with road construction, detours, and wrong turns really left me frazzled. Sometimes being away energized me, but other times I came back totally spent.

For the believer, heaven is our ultimate home. It is the place... THE place... where all our troubles are dropped outside the door, swallowed up in our Savior's victory. Here there is true comfort, true belonging, true welcome. There will be rest. There will be rejoicing. There will be reuniting with those beloved who have gone before. There will be peace... and there will be love, for Jesus will be there. And in that moment when we finally arrive, we will know. We will know that we are finally...

Home.