On making a home.featured

“We must understand the creation of home as a work of incarnational power and creativity. ‘Kingdom Come’ doesn’t happen on some cosmic scale; the whole point is that it invades the physical at the humblest level. 

As Christ was born a tiny human child of Mary, so Christ comes again, invading the human realm in and through our ordinary love of children and friends, spouses and siblings. 

His Kingdom comes in the way we celebrate, the shelter we make of our homes, the joy we put into what we cook, and eat and create, our willingness to welcome strangers into our midst. 

As the Holy Spirit fills us, our families and friendships and the particular physical spaces of our lives become the spaces where Christ is born again and again — growing, ordering, renewing, healing.” (The Life Giving Home, Sally and Sarah Clarkson)

Sarah Clarkson’s words stop me in my tracks. After years of reading and searching for the words to describe the holiness imbued in the making of home, they sit right in front of my eyes. Ringing with beautiful truth and simplicity. 

My breath catches and my eyes well at the relief and overwhelming joy of seeing the reality I work for day in and day out placed so precisely into the story I love most.

And then the air leaves my lungs. Anguish and grief and anger pour out in the tears that now fall.

This holy, essential work. This vocation that I love deeply and have given so much of myself to. This is what I will lose if this accursed cancer has its way. 

The hours of nursing and rocking until my body aches. Changing diapers and cleaning unfathomable mounds of crumbs from the floor and sticky yogurt from every conceivable crevice. Laundry and dishes. Cooking and cleaning. Resetting our home each night to greet the next day peacefully. The day-in, day-out work of family life. 

Filling moments of ordinary with unexpected beauty. A favorite story shared snuggled in pajamas with Christmas lights twinkling in the dark, quiet morning. A cozy blanket covering the child far away in imaginary lands between the pages of a book.

Candles and butter drenched toast with soup after a chilly walk. Cake to celebrate feast days and firsts. Nature gathered by little hands proudly displayed in our windows and on our table. Watching the miraculous transformation of caterpillar to butterfly year after year.

Sacred words and prayers and images at home on our walls and bookshelves and in our daily rhythms, baby blankets, teethers, and dress up.

Trekking through unknown cities after dark. At home in the physical act of togetherness. Letting surprise and wonder fill my gaze and voice in every church and museum and gallery. Seeing my own wonder reflected in little eyes just beginning to grasp the extraordinary immensity and beauty of creation.

Reminding them in whispered tones that it all reflects the audacious, abundant love of the One who made them and remains with them.

Creating traditions and rhythms carefully and intentionally that communicate to us and to others “this is what the Stowe Shows do. This is what they value.” 

This making of home. Of family life. This is what I was born to do. This is the life I have been privileged to freely and boldly choose over and over and over again.

It’s the story I long to write not just with my words but with the entirety of my life. In the mundane and in the extraordinary, I delight in the beginnings of holiness taking root in our family life.

But it’s not a story that can be completed in a decade. 

There are chapters upon chapters still to write of late nights and broken hearts. Of questions and triumphs. Love and loss and new life. There are four brilliant little authors under my care, and I want them to remain in my care.

I want all my years of growth and questions, my heartache and joy and hard-earned wisdom to be shared when needed to comfort their tender hearts and bolster their discouraged minds. 

I want to create a home where they can grow and learn and deeply root themselves in truth and beauty. To nourish their bodies and hearts and minds.

To teach them, as Sally Clarkson taught Sarah, how to create a home wherever they land in life. To carve out space for beauty and rest and all that is sacred. To let their lives and their homes image Christ.

I want to always be the embodiment of home for Jeff. To stretch and grow and learn and pray alongside him. To celebrate 15 and 25 and 50 years of marriage.

To hold his hand and cry with him as our children take their first steps outside of our home. To dance with him at their weddings and rejoice together in their triumphs. To welcome future generations of our family together.

To fall in love with him again at every stage of our lives. To lead and carry each other home. 

As these thoughts rush through my head, I feel myself begin to drown. With my last gasp of air, I pry my reluctant fingers open and hand even this to Christ. 

Screaming that it’s not fair. That He asks too much. Deep down knowing it’s not true. 

Knowing with absolute certainty that the home he will create and story he will write with it is unfathomably more beautiful than the one I have planned. That in fact the home I am aching and working to build cannot be complete without this surrender. 

The sacrifice of my vices wasn’t easy. The surrender of my holy desires is excruciating.

As CS Lewis aptly explains in Mere Christianity: “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. 

But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? 

The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought…You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself…

The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.” 

Slowly, painfully, breath returns to my lungs. Much later the tears subside. 

I begin to write the sentence of today. Resolved anew that each word I write will chart the course of this story as one of beauty and surrender. Of faithfulness and diligence in the small tasks. In the humble particulars of our days that turn our simple home and selves into a palace, a resting place for God.