Being Home

Being home. What does that mean to you?Home is where your heart is. Home is where you build your nest. There’s no place like home. Home Sweet Home. Home is where your story begins.

So many visions pop into our minds when we hear that word, “Home”. Television shows and commercials spend a lot of time and money producing those images of home that tugs at our heartstrings.

Home IS where your story begins. The only problem with that is for many of us, the story is more of a horror flick.

I learned a few months ago that some of us have homes, but many of us merely live in houses. Home produces a safe, calm and loving environment, a place where you know the people who reside within those four walls are people who are there for you. They are the people who will protect you from the unsafe and unknown people and things in our world.

A house, on the other hand, is simply a place to go at the end of the day. A house is typically a place where chaos abounds and the only sure thing is that there will be more chaos to follow.

A house is a place where secrets are kept, threats are made and people are “used, abused and tattooed”, as my friend Mary would say.

Where do you live?

Is it a house or a home?

The thing about a home is it can quickly become a house if the safe environment is compromised. A change can come about so suddenly that before you know it, that sweet haven of safety and love has been turned upside down. The rug gets pulled out from under you by circumstances you neither asked for or saw coming. If you had known, then perhaps you could have prepared for them.

But if you were just a child when the uncontrollable occurred, then there was really nothing you could do but pray and hope that somebody would SEE and help you out of the nightmare you wake up and find yourself right smack in the middle of.

It takes awhile, on the other hand, for a house to become a home. It takes a concentrated effort of attention, affection and approval; a brick by brick layering of trust and faith in a Power greater than the circumstances or events that have caused the place where you live to simply be a house.

Being home is about love, not a building. It’s about commitment and faith. It’s about trusting the journey and the One who has seen your life before you were born.