Home Sweet Home

 Another cool Saturday, and this time no rushing out of the door. Today there will be a haircut and clothes shopping and maybe stopping by the chicken farm but none of that requires scheduling. Wrapped in a blanket in a corner of the porch, hiding from the wind and watching the chickens run across the yard. Yesterday we started setting up Christmas. I got out the snow village and set up each house on the white snowy shelves that are just a little dusty atop shelves full of books and games. I first thought of my mom and the Christmas shop, and how she admired each one slowly. How she loves the magic of Christmas time and wanted to share it with all of us. I remembered how 5 years ago Thanksgiving was on the 28th of November, just like this year, and how we ate our meal in the solemn quiet of the hospital cafeteria while mom was upstairs. How she didn't get to see the Christmas lights twinkling in the trees one more time, but just 6 days later she got to see something, and Someone profoundly more beautiful. How she spent her last days surrounded by the people she loved with her whole life and watching Hallmark Christmas movies. 

Last year I packed up the snow village with my stomach lurching because everything had just started going wrong at the condo and we knew there would not be another Christmas there. At the time, nothing seemed right in our world. 

Last night it started getting cold again after a hot Thanksgiving. We made a fire and cooked hot dogs and s'mores until it started to rain and then we laughed and ran, dodging rain drops with our supplies tucked hastily in the pockets of too big sweaters. We found the safety of the porch cover got in the inflatable hot tub. I could still see the fire flickering gently and the chicken coop with its new Christmas lights and the trampoline with the homemade ninja course dangling over it. I thought about last year when I thought everything was going wrong but if I had known that next year, I would be sitting out here in my back yard surrounded by all of these simple things that once seemed impossible I would have said- I can do this. I can get through this next 6 months of roller coast ride and sweat and tears and times of feeling homeless and rejected and ashamed because on the other side- there is this.

There is that feeling of home. Of 10-year-old in pajama pants out searching eagerly for eggs in the nesting box. And watching plants grow inch by inch in the homemade raised garden beds and my kids swing through the trees laughing and being the monkeys that they are. A Christmas tree on the porch. An outdoor Thanksgiving meal with family. Neighbors walking by with their dogs calling out compliments on all the hard work we have done to this house. Teenage boys stopping by to collect some of mine on their way to the skate park. 

Last night our Bible reading ended with the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand and the commentary of the Bible we were reading ended with: "When Jesus meets a need, He provides abundantly and extravagantly." Those words choked in my throat and hung in the air before we were all up again and bustling around for toothbrushes. 

And so, it is a couple of days after Thanksgiving, but this year home is what I am most thankful for. Home in the backyard gathered under the Banyan tree. Home in the campground 7 months ago, fleeing the angry neighbors and wondering where we will end up next. Knowing that home isn't a place where you have to tiptoe around, but a place where you can be free to be yourself. Knowing that home isn't a place at all here on this earth.

Home is prettier than Christmas lights. It is a knowing that all this hard, with its fleeting moments of magic, is just getting us closer to our real home with Jesus. 

I'll see you there, mom.