The heart of Home

Home.

What does home mean to you? For some it can create a warm fuzzy feeling, it can be a smell of your favorite home cooked meal stewing over the stove, a song or melody your mom would sing over you every night, the laugh your sister would make when something was funny, a memory of holiday traditions and celebrations that only your family knows about. For some it can cause an ache and be a place you don’t want to remember because of the brokenness or trauma. If this is the case for you, I am sorry. I want you to know that you can absolutely break this off of your family. Home can be different because you can stand in the gap and create a new way for you and your children and the generations to come.

The definition of home according to Merriam Webster states, “one’s place of residence; domicile; house.”

This definition is partly true. Home isn’t so much the place, or the walls that hold it up, even though that is a part of it. We search for homes on Zillow to visualize ourselves in a setting that provides a place to protect and provide for our families. Many times we have Pinterest boards of what our dream homes would look like. White kitchen with open shelving, exposed wooden floors throughout and floral wallpaper for accent walls. Those fixer upper shows can be a blessing and a curse because we can gain inspiration and ideas or always feel like our homes are not good enough and see a lack. However, if we only fix our eyes with just those concepts we miss the complete picture of what HOME is. Could it be that the Lord wants to preserve and restore home and the home life? That home is so much more than what it looks like or what decorations are in it? Those are added touches that can bring personality, but the truth is you can have a beautiful home with all the things in it and still lack love, peace, rest, joy and the spirit of the Lord dwelling there. Home is so much bigger than what culture says is important. We get to decide what is important and God is showing us. Home is the breath and heart of what dwells inside it—God, the people, the life lived, the love fostered and for what is cultivated.

Home is for cultivating heaven on earth.

Did you hear that? I believe it. We get to establish this. Home is a place of ministry. It starts from here. If we can not love and serve those in our home first then how can we show up and love and serve those around in the way it’s intended? It first starts here my friends. We need home for a place to belong, a refuge to rest, to find purpose and inspiration, to be ourselves, to protect what matters. Home should be a place to test, train, equip. Home should be the best place to ever be. The gathering together, of family, friends, and even strangers. Somehow we have gotten away from this especially because of what’s happened in the past few years.

Growing up we moved a lot. Some of it because of my Dad being in the military. The other because even when we were stationary in the same town in Kansas, my parents would move. Fast forward to after college and moving away from Kansas and everything I knew. We relocated to my husbands hometown in Indiana. We bought a home after getting married and eight years later the Lord relocated us to several states until finally moving us to a permanent home here in New Hampshire. In those locations we have lived in six places consisting of apartments, an old small style cottage with no insulation (talk about a very cold winter), and other homes. So many moves and a variety of different places. During this season, it felt weary because we longed for a place to plant roots in our wandering lives. However, the Lord taught us some important lessons that we would have missed if we had it differently. He had shaken things up to reveal to not place our being or identity in a place, because it could be gone tomorrow. All of it. In fact, the most important part we realized was our home wasn’t a place, it was who— it was each other. It also allowed us to see with spiritual eyes that our home is not a place here on earth. We are just here just for a short time until we spend eternity in heaven. No matter how many times we moved, it was about each other that made home, home. It taught us to value people over things, grow closer to one another and depend on God. That’s all that mattered.

I know this isn’t always the case for some. Home can be a prison. The feeling of being trapped. Some it can be a place of loneliness and walls up, just aching for the love and attention of their people right in front of them. There are so many things pulling us from home today—distraction and busyness, not to mention screens. Which sometimes doesn’t allow us to be fully intentional or present. We have to come back HOME. To protect, to guard, to open our eyes and see our people right in front of us. To put God in the center. In Joshua 24:15 it says, “as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Let this be our anthem. The Lord is wanting to restore the heart of home and to protect it. To unleash heaven on earth in our homes.

Let us remind ourselves what the heart of home really is and bring it back. It starts with us. It starts today. If you are one that is struggling what home is for you, or you feel your home needs help. Please reach out and let me pray for you. You are not alone and it’s never too late.

Armor up,

Jessica xo