Home: A Person, not a Place

I’ve called this little corner of the internet home to my thoughts for a year now. I feel like I’m finally starting to settle in and have a vision for what I want this space to be. I have ideas not unpacked or hung on the walls yet, but I’m making progress. The themes of vulnerability and authenticity continue to emerge at the forefront of my pondering, and waiting continues to be the crucible of my story. My heart is to cultivate hospitality and belonging in my physical home, in every self-expression like this website, and in my very being. I pray as you read about these themes through the lens of my experiences, you feel at home here. I also know that like the way I decorate my home, not everyone will like what they see, and you might outrightly disagree with what I write. That’s okay; you’re still welcome here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about home recently, as I hope to move into an apartment soon that I can call my own: a physical space that is a reflection of who I am. As humans—especially women, I think—we long to cultivate home and community. My personal mission and ministry for my heart and my home are becoming more and more integrated. When I invite someone into my home, what do they feel? I hope it is radical hospitality: a love that invites and accepts them as they are, in their fullness, uniqueness, and brokenness. I hope they find a place at the table that is pre-set specifically for them, with prayer, intention, and care, and that people drop by unannounced, and are welcomed just the same. I hope my home feels full of warmth and sunlight, sounds like tasteful mood music and an out of tune piano, smells like home-cooked food, and overflows with contagious life and laughter. I hope my home is covered in peace, and that each piece of furniture and artwork is thoughtfully placed to inspire beauty and capture delight. I pray it is a place of safety, where healing begins and transformational growth is sustained.

In his book The God of the Garden, Andrew Peterson suggests home is “a place that shapes and gives meaning to our lives.” When I think about homes that have shaped me, feelings of safety, warmth, hospitality, and belonging flood my mind. I think of the house I grew up in, my grandparents’ neighborhood I’ve visited innumerable times, and the town I’m currently growing roots in. I call them all home, but which is true home? Is it the place, or the people, or the stories and memories that define home? Is home purely a physical reality, or a feeling and experience? I hope it is all of the above.

Another question: is home something outside of ourselves, or something within ourselves? I want to be a person that “feels like coming home” to those who know and love me, and even those who don’t. I want to be a person who carries and offers hospitality, care, and connection wherever I go. I want every outward expression of home to be an extension and overflow of my heart.

When home is found in a person, not a place, then I am free to joyfully celebrate my grandparents as people apart from where they live. This example is particularly poignant as they move towards downsizing from their beloved house of almost 45 years. Whenever I return to them, wherever they are, my grandparents are home to me, and the house they live in is just an extension of their hearts. It becomes a gift to mourn the loss of a house and yard that have been deeply loved for so long, and we can anticipate their expression of care in a new place. When people dwell in one town for their entire lives, as my grandparents have, the power of home extends not just to the walls of a house, but the very land around them. Home is with my grandparents, so I feel it manifested in their kids’ bedroom where they read us bedtime stories, and the guest bedroom where I hear the Owls or Mourning Doves outside the window every morning (they’re still reminding me of the difference between their calls). I see home in my grandma’s immaculate flower beds that have expanded with her heart through the years towards the newly-organic cornfield behind the house, and in my grandpa’s fancy birdseed feeders, perfectly positioned to provide an endless source of entertainment and frustration with wildlife of various kinds. I feel at home walking through the goose poop around Lake Harmony and admiring the beautiful, rolling hills of Wayne County, Ohio because they have shaped the people that I love. When I return in many years with my children, headstones will still mark my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ home at Salem Mennonite Church, the Amish buggies will still invite us to slow down on winding country roads, and the memories of my grandparents—of home that has shaped me—will still be alive through stories.

Andrew Peterson writes in the same moving memoir, “We need stories; stories need places. Places need people, and people need homes. We were made for community, but so many things about this in-between world of no-places seem designed to hinder it instead.” I spent 24 precious hours last weekend with my grandparents, and for as many stories as I have heard from them over the years, there are always more to discover. Who knew my mom and uncle knocked the car out of park in the driveway as kids, and it rolled backwards with them in it all the way into the mailbox? How could I forget about about chasing Papa’s remote control Hummer in circles with my brothers in the same driveway decades later, or climbing the Sugar Maple in the front yard before it was cut down? I grin even now, remembering the activities we anticipated every summer: playing wiffle ball and corn hole in the backyard, helping refill birdseed feeders, collecting Japanese Beetles off the bushes, making enough applesauce to last the entire year, eating Schwan’s tiger pops and Dariette pinwheels. No matter where I live, I will always associate winter with warm and wonder-filled memories at Lake Harmony: pulling one another on sleds followed by hot chocolate in snowman mugs (when we used to have white Christmas’s), heated euchre tournaments, sneaking cookies off the porch, and pranks I still get credit for.

Being in my grandparents’ home—being with them—reminds me I am known and loved. They have watched me grow up, and know most of my stories. It is a joy to sit with them and listen to theirs. Being in a place that has been drenched in care, intention, and story for almost half a century roots me as a person. It makes me long to spend a lifetime in one place so that stories can emerge from within the walls and fireplace and couches and kitchen and trees when my grandchildren come to visit. I feel the burden of the “in-between world of no-places,” as Peterson describes, especially as a twenty-something in the most transient part of my life. I long to be home to another person, find home in another person, and together cultivate a home that invites story and history. My grandparents model home so well and their place bursts with stories. What a legacy to inherit and continue!

If people, their hearts, houses, and land are temporary homes for us here on earth, I am convinced we find our ultimate, eternal home in the person of Jesus Christ. Acts 17:28 says, “In him we live, we move, and we have our being.” That sure sounds like a definition of home to me. In Jesus we find our resting place, our true home where we come alive because we are fully known and loved. Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us where we will dwell for eternity in the warmth, brightness, and hospitality of our gracious, loving Father. In the meantime, his heart and Spirit overflows with love, kindness, and invitation to belonging extended to every person who seeks him as the way, the truth, and the life (John 14).

I often live under the weight of the not-yet’s: I am not in the home I hope to be in one day. My relationships are not what I wish they were. I don’t value and make time for stories like I wish I would. I see lack all around me, but then I remember the already: God is a God of abundance right now, not just in the future when my longings are met. Because he offers endless grace and does not condemn me, I don’t need to be critical of myself. Being human is hard and takes courage; it takes practice and many mistakes to live well. Spending just a few days at my parents’ and grandparents’ houses last week, I was invited to acknowledge the difficulty and completely crash. I didn’t try to uphold any image or achievement that I’m usually working towards. I didn’t wear a mask or makeup; I was myself, in all my mess and brokenness, and being loved in that state was the best healing remedy I could have received. Love assured my soul that I belong, which is the definition of home that we are all looking for.

I am grateful my family offers me this type of unconditional love, but they don’t do it perfectly. They can’t meet my desires and fix my insecurities, but Jesus can. He is the home I long for, whom I encounter in my parents, grandparents, and so many others around me. He is who I rest in when I return to my current home six hours away from family, feeling alone in this in-between stage of life. He will be my comfort on earth when those I love leave their earthly dwelling, until I too am called to my eternal home he is preparing for those who love him. I am home wherever I go because Jesus has made his home inside me. The freedom, authenticity, and belonging I crave is found right here, right now, by faith in Christ. I live in him, and he lives in me, creating space in my soul to receive all people with increasing kindness and hospitality. I can host, hold, and be home to people and their stories, however transient my physical home is, because I am secure in the perfect Lover of my soul. Jesus is the person who “shapes and gives meaning to my life.” He is true home.