I’m a sucker for those cute signs one hangs in their house, like; “Home Sweet Home”
or “Home is where the heart is”…but those signs, as cute as they are, are just one more thing.
In all seriousness, what does Home Sweet Home mean to you?
What do you define as home, where do you define as home?
These days those signs might be more accurate if they said:
Home is where all my stuff is.
Home is where I hole up after work.
Home is where I binge watch… and the like.
I’m guilty of all the above fictitious signs.
Recently my husband graduated from Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis. His first call isn’t to a “local” parish within the United States, but instead we’ve been called to Belmopan, Belize, located in Central America. We’ve had to part with about 2/3rds of our stuff. Our lives now fit into the number of suitcases we can check onto a plane. Apart from a few tubs of theological books being shipped, we’ve significantly reduced our stuff, and man is it freeing. (Ironically, one half of a suitcase is house signs).
Fictitious Signs
How many times have you come home from work to check out? It’s been a long day, you just want to be, maybe take a nap, read a book, garden, do nothing, not see a soul until you’ve got to go back on Monday.
Or maybe you go home at the end of a day to binge watch TV, fall asleep on the couch just to wake up, walk to bed and stumble out of it in the morning tired from the restless sleep that binging brings.
Home is where the heart is…
Our hearts should be wrapped around Christ Jesus.
When Jesus is our center, when He is our whole reason for being, our whole life changes. What is important, what we hold onto, also changes.
Home Sweet Home becomes less about where we escape to. It should become less and less about the material things (can’t take any of the cute signs with us). We start to focus more on our Eternal Home, our true Home Sweet Home. Where we have yet to go. Where we will be one day.
When we moved to Seminary in 2020, I struggled with that move. One, it was in the height of the pandemic, already a stressful time with all the unknowns. We were moving from a ranch style house to a 3-bedroom townhouse, and we had to downsize. The hardest thing for me was to let go of my sweatshirt collection. I went from owning some 25 hoodies to 3 hoodies. It was a crazy thing that shouldn’t have a hold on me, clothing, but it did. At that time in life, I also only took my top 3 favorite signs (I’ve since inherited more when my grandma passed, hence half a suitcase packed with signs).
What’s your point Emily
Moving in 2020, getting rid of half our possessions, and again this past June getting rid of another 2/3rds of them – I struggled. In a way our stuff…holding onto it, is a comfort to us, one we may not even realize we cling to. Until we’re asked to let go of it. Our homes have become our safe space, our space to unwind. Our houses hold our favorite (insert thing here). Even in packing to make the move to Central America we’ve found we have held onto our favorite books, or board games, signs…we’ve kept some of our comforts. We’ve also turned many over, gifting them to neighbors.
In letting go we are trusting in God’s next steps. We are leaning more on the truth that it’s okay to let it go. The Lord is and will always provide our daily needs. It’s also okay to keep some of our comforts.
But when our homes get too full, maybe it’s time to pause and ask the Lord:
What is getting in my way here?
What is keeping me from putting my trust in you?
How can I live today more freely from these earthly things that have a hold of me?
We can’t take any of it with us when we go. And letting go of it now free’s us not to rely on our Home Sweet Home, but to rely on our Heavenly Father.
