Home? Home! Home.

I have for the past several years personally been focused on the concept of home.

It’s a time of year when many people find themselves returning home, thinking of home, spending time at home and some wishing their homes were different and so I figured I would share some of my thoughts and evolutions of thoughts with y’all.

I’ve mentioned home here often, so to those who read my writing, you are likely not surprised by my choice of topics.

As a young girl I had thoughts of home.
I dreamed of making a home and filling it with children. I would mentally select the various pretty things in my mother’s house that I would also have in my own one day.

Hurricane lamps, jewelry boxes, ceramic pitchers and this blue hen were among some of the things of my mother’s in our home that I admired.

I played with dolls and was forever making them homes…in dollhouses, on the floor of my closet, in the back seat of the car even.

Garth Williams really knew how to illustrate, didn’t he? This one of Laura with her corn cob baby has always been a favorite.

My friends and I also enjoyed setting up homes in the great outdoors.

At their house, we would make primitive homes in their large wood pile their parents had, setting up counters and tables as our kitchens and flat platforms that served as beds in other sections of the pile.

At my house, home revolved around an old iron pot my parents had which served as the hearth and kettle. Everything else was built around that and the meals we were preparing in said pot out in the yard.

Photos of simpler times when little girls played outdoors and with dolls

But eventually it was suggested to me, probably by the culture, that I was too old to play such games.
I needed to get serious, get educated and accomplished, get a job and independence.

Day and Night Barbie, career woman by day, socialite by night

And so my love and desire for home transitioned to a determination to work hard and make something of myself.

A house, when it came into my life, was a place to live while I worked.

It would eventually be something I achieved, something I furnished and decorated, but the never to be the ground up version of the homes we made in those wood piles, the homes I created for my doll in the back of my closet.

I know the idea and feel of home called to me because for the first 10 years of my marriage my husband and I developed a habit of buying houses in need of updating or evens ones in disrepair.
We saved homes.
I carefully created color schemes with paint, redesigned kitchens, selected tile and fixtures, and even staged home for sale.
We both got pretty handy and learned to turn sad, abandoned, and mediocre spaces into warm and loving homes for us and then for those to whom we eventually sold the homes.

But there was still something lacking even as I hung beautiful curtains, curated bedding, and hung our artwork.

I never knew what it was…but I could feel it.

I loved to be home, but I often felt that to make an impact I had to GO OUT into the world.
I had to do my work out there, be seen there, have an impact there for it to be counted.

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It was C*v*d that brought me home again.

I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Being forced into our residences, having our freedoms stripped away, and watching the world lose its mind for a bit, will quickly make you reevaluate everything you believe and hold dear.

Being confined to our houses (and yards) for a period of time made many of us start to think of them differently.

Recognizing how much of our modern life is an illusion, a tenuous situation of provision and “safety” at best, resurrected that little girl in me, the one who made house in the wood pile and “cooked” soup in a kettle in her imaginary home in her yard.

And I don’t mean this in the sense that I became a “prepper” because I did not.

I will always think it’s prudent to store up food and provisions that a household requires in the event of flood, storms, gas shortages, power outages or a massive globalist cabal attempt at full takeover.

We should be smart and plan ahead as much as is possible so that we can help ourselves and others in the event of an emergency.

But I didn’t come out of that 3 year experience they like to call a “pan-emic” with fear, I came out re-orientated.


I came out having found that little girl that was once satisfied and proud to create and curate a home.
I came out wanting to make the most of every day.
I came out desiring to double down on teaching and preparing my children for life.
I came out caring about new and different things… less what the outside world thought of me and more about who I was inside my home, who I was to my children, to my husband, to my neighbors and the people that came into my space to experience the real me and what the real me had created as a home.


I started to see what an honor and privilege it is as a woman to be a “keeper of the home.”
I found myself caring not just about throw pillows and paint colors, but the provisions and experiences offered by the home, how it made my children feel, how it inspired them, and made them feel safe and loved.

Artwork is Lore Pemberton

I went from wanting my space to look designed and beautiful to feeling warm, life-giving, supportive and nourishing.

Lore again, God bless this woman

I wanted the characters of the people living in the space (including myself) to be positively influenced by the environment in which they were growing.
I wanted home to be a sanctuary, a space that oriented all of us back to what matters most, a place to prepare these young boys (at the time) to become Godly and courageous men.

Lore’s simple depictions of home are so refreshing to me

Why?

I’m not exactly sure, but I think that as I started to see the world differently.

As I pulled away from a driving force of wanting the world to make me feel accomplished, accepted and artificially safe and drew closer to the Lord I realized that it is only in eternity that I find my home (Phill. 3:20)
It is only in God and the shelter of His wings that I can find safety and peace (Psalm 91).
It is only in Christ that I have acceptance( Isaiah 53:5).

All the discomfort of C*v*d for me wasn’t just the temporary press of a p**dem*c but rather a realization that I would never fully feel comfortable here, because I didn’t belong and earth would never fully be my home.

So as I began to realize that I wasn’t supposed to be focused on making myself comfortable but rather on doing the work assigned to me by my Maker, my paradigm shifted and everything was different.

Eternity started to feel closer and brighter and I was began to look less to what I wanted and desired in order to feel comfortable, and began seeking to know what tasks the Lord was offering me during my stint in this place.


And the funny thing about it was as I began to offer myself up and say, “OK, now what? What do you want from me?”

He gently showed me, “I gave you a dream and a heart. I made you a mother and a wife.”

The veil that had been placed over my eyes in my late teens and early 20’s regarding what my roles and responsibilities here on earth should be, they fell and I suddenly saw truth.

I was called to be light in darkness, but not necessarily in the public eye.
Not necessarily to strangers on the internet, but in my own home, first.


My home here, while temporary, can be an extension of the kingdom.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, styled, spacious, well designed, furnished or even tidy for it to breathe life into the people in it. ** AND to hammer this lesson “home” to me in during this time God saw it fit to make it so that my family and I lived in a camper, in a trailer, and in a creamery. We were displaced and I was without cozy, traditional home space for a bit to re-train my mind and my heart what “home” was supposed to mean…and how I could create “home” in any space, anywhere with whatever the Lord had given me….more on that adventure another time….


I started to see what a gift it was to have children and a husband to provide for, feed and nourish.

I wanted to take pride in running my home in a way I had never before.

Not pride in designing or decorating, although our own personal aesthetic touch does play a role in all this, but in being present in my home, letting it reflect my values, my priorities, the life we are creating together.

I began to desire to make the most of the spaces, land, and provisions God had given us, to better learn how to use my human skills (while I’m here) to help and teach others how to take care of themselves so we can all continue to do the work assigned us here.

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I don’t believe that every woman is necessarily called to this work.
I know that there are women in the world that have no children and maybe call no one place their home.

I’m not writing to say that we all need our lives to look the same.

The body of Christ has many members and all the members are important.
Some are ears.
Some are eyes.
Some are legs, feet, arms.

Others maybe hearts, minds, livers….

But I do believe that there is a large population of women who have been made mothers and who have been provided a building of some sort, a residence, women that need to be called home again.

I am also not calling women to obsess about their homes, to fantasize about what it will someday be, to lust after the “homesteads” and cozy homes of social media or even Lore Pemberton’s imaginary homes seen in her artwork.

I do not believe that women are called to slave and work to make the home “pretty” or up-to Pinterest and Instagram’s standards, but to spiritually and practically curate spaces in which they are their glory serving the Lord by serving their families every day.

If you have been given the domain of home, this is a call to not overlook it, to not take it for granted, to stand firm and seek what God is asking of you as a mother, homemaker, and a servant of the Most High.

Artist: Marsha Olderr

I don’t think that I’m the only one that forgot the dreams she had as a little girl of being a mother in a particular way in a particular kind of home.

I know based on what I see on Substack that I’m not the only one being called home again.

And so if that’s you, I want to encourage you.

You heart is being called to move closer to your eternal home and it’s very likely that your body is being called to worship the Lord in your earthly home until we are all called home together.

Let’s bring our lives and our faith home again.

xoxo,

Sarah