Looking at magazines like Southern Living all these years painted a picture in my head of what a home should look like- perfectly dressed families with coordinating outfits, tables that are laden with elaborate meals and décor and seat 16 of your closest friends, and beds decked out in layers of the finest sheets and enough pillows to satisfy even the pickiest of pillow connoisseur. Upon getting married I pictured myself being one of the women pictured in the magazine. I imagined that my hope chest items that I had so carefully guarded along with wedding gifts would stock my home to be one of perfection. Little did I know that I would be called to a place on the other side of the world, a place that would limit me from using those precious breakable items stored up for so many years. I didn’t know that I would be setting up an apartment in a place where there wasn’t a Bed, Bath, and Beyond and that finding items that I deemed important would be impossible to find.
So would I fail in setting up the home of my dreams? Now that the wedding is over and my marriage has begun I have had many moments of wrestling with this question. How could I set up a home in a foreign country where so many things seemed to be complicated? In thinking through these things I began to think through what the word ‘home’ actually means. In the minds of the women of Southern Living a home focuses around the things you have and what they look like, how many shades of blue you are able to coordinate into a room, and if your peach pie has a perfectly golden crust. But, in the end do these things really matter? The Bible says that things will be destroyed by moth and dust- this I have witnessed all too often living where I do. If our focus is on the things of this world then our focus is not where it needs to be. A home should not be a place of stuff or things rather it should be a safe place for people to gather and fellowship, a place for a family to be raised in the truths of God’s Word, and a place where His message can be proclaimed to the world.
The easier route may be to stay in a comfy home where you have access to all that you need (and there is nothing wrong with doing so if that is where you have been called), but what does that mean for those of us that have been called to a place very far from what we remember to be ‘home’. Have we failed? Perhaps we have from the eyes of magazine, but in His eyes we haven’t failed. Yes there will be days where you will be absolutely frustrated, where things just don’t seem to go as planned, where everything you try to accomplish just doesn’t work the way you intended…. In the end it isn’t about us setting up our home, rather it is about Him setting up our home through us. As the saying goes ‘Home is where the Heart Is’. In many ways that is true. Where our hearts are- including the attitude of our hearts affects our outlook on what the word ‘home’ truly means.
So after processing through this a bit do I still harbor the desire for a perfect home- yes in some ways I do…. it will always be a dream to live in a Southern home with a white picket fence and a wrap-around porch. Who knows maybe one day it will happen. Until then I am confident that He who brought me all the way across the world sees the big picture and knows exactly what I need. For today I can smile as I write this as I watch the sun set over the lake and am reminded of the humble white picket fence from my bedroom window- He knows our every thought :)
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