5 Minute Friday: Home

One more week in the books and one more week closer to a new adventure for the Hoover family. Friday is the day that I stop all my regular writing and let writing be fun and free for five minutes. I join up with a gaggle of gals (and a few guys) to put fingers to keypad without looking over our shoulders. It is my version of writing free and fearless.

Topic: Home
GO!

The light slips through the slats of the window as I rub sleepy eyes and a tussled head of curly hair. The linoleum is cold and the cat is demanding as I stumble into the kitchen and kick him out into the sun room for some morning bird watching. This house with its awful wall paper and wood paneling from a bygone (thank God) era has kept out the wind and rain as we've weathered our own uncertain storm this past year and a half. We've dreamed beneath it's roof. We've held wonder next to fear and tried to hope that God was working out the invisible on our behalf. This house has seen an evolution of faith for us, but now it's time to go. Time to pack the boxes and pay the last of the rent. Time to strike out once more in search of home.

Home, that place that broke ugly into a thousand pieces when I was only twelve years old. I want walls that are my own. I want a place to hang my hat and my heart. I want that for me and the girl that I cradle crying at 3:00 am. I want to create a place for us all to thrive that is us and ours and more than walls. I want to rebuild what was lost and so much more.

For now I pick what books and keepsakes to put in storage. The heavy philosophy books with more questions than answers and the sealed box with my wedding dress get packed away. I rifle through all the random accumulation of a life lived in one place. I am grateful for the impending future. Grateful for yet another place to live and make love and life, but weary that yet again it is only a house and not a home. I struggle to know how to bridge that gap in the in between. I don't know that we'll ever not be in the in between on this matter so I know I need to learn how. I have too. I must.

I've got to learn to reach across the chasm of a house not our own and make my family a home.

A home that is built on nothing less that Jesus blood and righteousness. The place that our hearts run when the days are dark or just plain hard. The place that love builds and guards no matter what the outer structure looks like.

STOP!