Home...

I love home.  I love being here.  I love knowing it's here after a long day of running everyone around.  I love locking the door with us on the inside.  I love knowing that every night at about 10 o'clock my whole family is tucked in their beds all under the same roof.  {Not the same now that one of us is a full time college student, and only sleeps in his bed about four months out of the year...} 

My love for home isn't about how it looks or the stuff I have inside it.  It's not even about the four walls that hold a physical building together.  It's more about a place of refuge.  Refuge from the stresses that the outside world puts on me...from having to live up to other's expectations and allows me to just be ME.  

HOME is the state of being comfortable and content.  It's a place where I contemplate who I am and who I am becoming.  Home affords me the ability to stop.  

To rest.  

To refuel. 

I want my children to grow up with this kind of HOME as their heritage.  I want them to look back on the years they spent living at HOME as some of the best years of their lives. When they look back on these years, I want them to think fondly of the great times the four of us have had together...but I also want them to remember the faces of others who have come through here, too.

I want to foster the kind of HOME where those who consider this their permanent address enjoy it as much as those who come in and out to visit.  I want the echoes of laughter and the memories of heartfelt conversation to bounce off the walls of this place for years to come...and in the hearts of my children forever.

It's a strange thought that years ago my own parents, who lived within these same four walls, may have said these same things about HOME.  It must be why I remember missionaries coming and going, and friends stopping by to visit.  And it must be why I have this need in me to share my space, and the peace I find here, with others.  I want my doors to be open and the contents of my kitchen to be shared. 

These days, most of the visitors are twenty and under and have a preference for things like cookies and chips...and I like it that way. I hope in some way these visitors will look back on their memories and also see that this was a place that afforded them moments in time to see how HOME should be.

I have a {secret crush} over a writer named Donald Miller.  He's somewhat unconventional and sometimes makes me stop and contemplate everything I think I feel strongly about.  He loves Jesus freely and honestly.   I know nothing about the four walls he calls HOME..but he wrote THIS on his blog today and I'm pretty sure I get it...and like it.

So, I ask you...what is HOME to you?

“Home is the most popular, and will be the most enduring of all earthly establishments”

Channing Pollock

A look at the birds...

This is where you'll find me on any given morning.  It's where I have my quiet time of reading in the morning, where I do most of my blogging, and where you would have found me all afternoon yesterday reading a book.  The last few days I've had to grab a blanket to sit out here in my pjs.

If I look off to my left, this is what I see. 

And if I turn completely to the left, this is what I see....

The other day I decided it was time to feed all the birds I spend so much time listening to out here.  My mom always had a bird feeder on this window and we were always fascinated by them.  I sort of thought it's something that older women do when they have an empty-nest...maybe a replacement of the children that have grown and gone.  {sorry, mom!}  So, either I was wrong or I've now become one of those older women...even though my kids are still here and need me.  Whatever the reason, I hung a feeder in the same spot since it seemed to work in the past.  In a few hours one bird discovered it and told the rest of the birds in Lancaster County to come too.  Mom warned me that it would be a fulltime job keeping them fed! 

She didn't warn me that it would be a fulltime job watching them.  They are totally distracting to me!  Their little chirping and singing sounds distract me from everything I do out here....making me take twice as long to finish up!  But, I love it.  They just keep coming back for more and bringing more friends.  This morning I had to do a google search to try to identify one particular bird that keeps coming back. {See...I've totally bought into the old lady thing} 

 I still haven't figured out what it is...

She's small like the chickadees that come, but much more timid.  Her head and breast are much redder than the picture shows-her back and feathers are brown. I watched her for a long time as she hid in the branches of the tree until a chickadee started feeding...then it was safe for her to hop on too. 

Anyone recognize her?  Mom?

Anyway, like I said...this birdfeeder is totally distracting to me.  I try to entice the kids to come out with me and watch them, but apparently it's not cool to sit out here in the quiet and watch.

Amidst the distraction is a verse that plays over and over in my head like music...

"That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life— Look at the birds.

They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them.

And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?" 

 Matthew 6

I keep thinking about the birds...they just keep coming back, trusting that there will be more....and it's been a reminder to me that this is how I am to live also.  Instead of worrying about how we will pay the bills or what direction I should be looking for a job...I need to just keep coming back to the source of my nourishment.  Worrying about all the "what-ifs" does not give the answers.  Resting in what I do know, will. 

So maybe that's why I keep coming back to this same spot day after day.  It represents my place of nourishment...the place where contentment is found.  The place that never goes empty or forgotten. 

The place where I "Look at the birds" and find my heart's rest....