Every Home A Foundation: 5 Take-Aways

There’s something about these slow days of late third trimester that I just love… like time is not real. You make it to 39 weeks (or maybe it’s 38 for some, or 37 for others) and all of a sudden, your baby could come any day or not for another 2 weeks. You don’t want to sit around and watch the days on the calendar pass by, but you’re also not motivated to take on any big projects that may end up unfinished, so you end up wandering through your dream-like days while the rest of the world carries on as normal. You read a new book or pick up a watercolor workbook or become invested in a new Youtube series. For me, it’s been finishing up Phylicia Masonheimer’s book, Every Home A Foundation: Experiencing God Through Your Everyday Routines.

The insomnia has worked out in my favor. Maybe some find it frustrating when their eyes shoot open at 1:00 am and, though their body physically begs for rest, it refuses to cooperate in surrendering again to sleep. I don’t mind much. Instead, I take the opportunity to gather the books from my nightstand and descend the stairs in the dead of night. The house just feels different in the midnight hours, when all my family sleeps and I sit awake by the soft glow of a small lamp in the stillness. There’s nobody’s needs to meet. There’s no pressure to be productive in any way. There is only me and the Lord who never sleeps and the many thoughts I have to share with Him every day, though usually no margin to get to them all. Sometimes I share them, but other times I drag a knitted blanket from the basket tucked in the corner, snuggle onto the couch, and lay before Him, thankful He knows even what is unspoken. This is where I’ve been reflecting on everything I’ve read, thinking through the mother I want to be as I prepare to welcome a second child into our home, and what I want my children to describe home having felt like.

These are the take-aways from Every Home A Foundation that have been on my mind in those midnight moments:

1. How we manage our homes matters to God because making a home with us has always been His heart.

From the very beginning, God has desired a home to live among His people. He created us to be His family, and Eden to be the place we could dwell together. When sin entered the world and humanity fell, God continued to pursue a home with us- through a tabernacle and then a temple. Through Jesus’ sacrifice, He put His very Spirit within us, abiding as close as the mention of His name. And, one day, we’ll walk together hand in hand again in a new Jerusalem.

If God has made the concept of home with us this important to Him, then the stewardship of our homes- both in its upkeep and in creating an environment of love and belonging, training and growth- is worthy of our best effort. Growing in this understanding is to form a theology of the home. It is to begin to see the home not just as a place to be known and loved, but as a point from which to know and love others as well. All of this is an act of worship to the Lord. We are demonstrating His nature through the very dwelling places He sought to establish with us first

 

2. Liturgies are any intentional rhythms which lead us to desire communion with God.

Back when I was working, my friends Monica, Kezia, and I had the coolest dynamic. We were all women of faith, but each of us from a different denomination. Rather than letting our differences drive us to debate, we united over our love of Christ and used our mutual respect for one another as an opportunity to ask more questions about each denomination’s beliefs and practices. While I am a non-denominational Protestant skewing Charismatic, Monica is a “super Catholic” (as she told me when she first met me… and then clarified, not because she’s super AT being Catholic, but because she’s super INTO being Catholic. I laughed at loud at her clarification and knew from that very moment we were going to be great friends), and Kezia is a Seventh-Day Adventist.

It always seemed to work out that Monica and I got to spend the most time together since many of the students we were serving overlapped. During these times, Monica would pick my brain about the depth of relationship I experienced with God through His Holy Spirit. We’d talk about receiving revelation through time spent reading the Word of God, spiritual gifts, and prophetic dreams. And I couldn’t get enough of hearing about the accomplishments of the saints and the Catholic traditions that have been preserved and honored for centuries. Catholics hold such a reverence for God.

I learned from Monica that the Catholic church refers to the specific order of events for how the mass service should be held as liturgy. This includes the elements of bread and wine, kneeling in prayer, singing certain songs all together or… this was so interesting to me… the fact that all Catholic churches are reading the same Scripture passages to their congregations globally every week.

Every Home a Foundation added to my perspective on this topic. Since all moments are sanctified by the presence of the Holy Spirit for the Christian, our sacred moments don’t have to be limited to a Sunday service. With the proper heart posture, even our every-day routines can become liturgical. That is, they can carry physical reminders of spiritual realities. We can invite God into the midst of them, experience His presence, and receive new revelation through them.

The chapters in Every Home a Foundation go on to cover the liturgies of home-making, cooking, cleaning, laundry, tending and mending, beauty, and hospitality. Each chapter gives examples for how these different ways of stewarding a home can be transformed into acts of worship. For readers who have never had proper home management modeled to them, Phylicia Masonheimer’s work provides a lot of structure. First, she includes reflection questions to help readers create a vision and then suggests ideas for creating systems based on that specific vision.

Her perspective in this kind of home-management is very similar to mine in creating the Miners League Master Binder. If you’ve not read about how I streamline my home’s systems through this binder, check out my blog post on the topic here.

3. We don’t need the dream home before inviting others in for discipleship.

When Justin and I moved into our townhome, we were focused on one thing only: doing whatever it took for our family to survive on a single income so I could be available for all of our firstborn’s medical needs. The home we chose was within walking distance of a local emergency room, shared a power grid with this emergency room (therefore ensuring we’d maintain or quickly regain power even through Florida’s hurricane season since our daughter was dependent on an electric feeding tube),  did not require lawn or yard maintenance since our schedules were already stretched thin, and allowed enough margin that I could quit my job and we could still manage the incoming medical bills. An added bonus was that it backed up to a nature preserve where we could open the dining room blinds and eat breakfast with a view of the deer grazing. In the six years we have lived here, we have seen a family of deer with all its young bucks in velvet each spring, alligators both on our doorstep and beneath our cars, a bear peeking in through a neighbor’s windows, a coyote running past at sunset, and a fair share of snakes, possums, and armadillos. Though purchased out of necessity, it truly has been a gift of the Lord to have lived so peacefully against this preserve, without any of the pressures of the other expensive properties in our beach town.

Though I say that Savannah was our sole focus, I can look back now and admit there was always a quiet desire tucked within our hearts that this home could also be used to love and serve others. We had just moved home after several lonely months of living between a hospital intensive care unit and a Ronald McDonald house, and we had a new perspective for how important it is to hold onto one another through this life. We named the townhouse The Ahava House upon moving in, even naming our Wifi accordingly. Ahava is the Hebrew word for love. It’s implication is both the divine love between God and people, and the kind of selfless, sacrificial love He calls His children to. A love more focused on giving than receiving. To match our new home’s name we wrote prayers and scriptures across the kitchen walls, beneath the new paint we’d soon be applying. 1 John 3:18 was among these scriptures: “Little children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” 

Shortly after writing these scriptures, however, the strangest thing happened. A global pandemic. Suddenly the company we’d hoped to open our home to was not going to happen. We wrestled with how to keep our daughter on a heart transplant waiting list safe. Our home became more a sanctuary- a quiet place to soak up our days with her and spend time in God’s presence- than a house used to host others. I’m so thankful for these days and this time now, on the other side of loss. Then our home shifted again, into a place of solace. God brought forth people that knew great depths of pain like we did, and He allowed us to sit with them. One at a time, they came through our door, curled their toes beneath blankets on our couch, sipped coffee or indulged in ice cream into the midnight hours, and often cried through their own questions and losses. Somehow, I missed the significance of this in the moment.

As our season changed, our Savannah now healed and whole in Heaven, my desire to move had become strong. Unfortunately, the increased price of homes in our town since we’d first bought and the inflated interest rates did not support this desire. Discontent began to settle into my heart and this home that had met so many of our needs became a source of shame to me. I was embarrassed that, not only had I lost my daughter but I was also living somewhere so outside the expectations I’d once held for a home. I felt as though I hadn’t just lost my daughter, but also years of my life that others my age had used to grow their families, careers, and the homes they fit these lives into. I was desperate for change- especially by the time another daughter came along. What I didn’t see was that God wasn’t done with His plans for our townhome. Justin would come home one day when our second born was just months old and express a desire to go back to school- a prayer I’d held for him for over 15 years. Staying in the townhome would allow us to pay out of pocket for this degree while remaining a single income family so I could be present with her and any children to come. We committed to a couple more years in our preserve-side place. Still, knowing our “why” didn’t keep my heart from feeling challenged.

Life was opening up for me in so many new ways. After years of living misunderstood and lonely as a medical mother, I was meeting so many friends as I stepped out into spaces that I’d never had the chance to with Savannah. I wanted a home to open to these women. I wanted to get back to my original hope for hospitality but, so much time had passed since living in a hospital, and I’d forgotten the heart posture I’d once held toward hosting. Now I dreamed of hosting birthday parties, small groups, weekly fellowship events for all the families we hoped to raise our children with. I didn’t want to- or even feel I could- invite them into our small home on the preserve, with its limited parking, square footage, or outdoor space. These frustrations grew into picking apart my entire home- analyzing every scuffed baseboard or stained couch pillow. I felt God calling me to be faithful with what I had before I could be trusted with more, but I didn’t want to invite anyone into this home. I didn’t know how. I had forgotten what a haven a home of any size could be to someone lonely and hurting.

It took a long while before I could humble myself enough to hear Him, but God eventually took me back to all those nights of having friends over to share their hearts. All the one-on-one’s. The tears cried, the prayers whispered, the hard questions said aloud, the deepest desires admitted. He reminded me of the inflatable mattress in a spare bedroom because it’s all we had to offer. The baking sheets hanging off the edge of counters in a small kitchen as we have prepared birthday cakes and treats for Bible Study brunch days.  The neighbors who don’t even speak the same language as us but look forward to our children’s handprint crafts and homemade treats when we ring their doorbell at all the different holidays. He reminded me how much I would have loved coming to this exact home and having someone to sit with when I felt most alone. And I finally realized something- this really has been The Ahava House we once declared. Not only do we not need the dream home before inviting others in for discipleship, but also hospitality doesn’t have to mean many people all at once. He leaves the 99 to pursue the 1, and sometimes the most powerful hospitality is when He calls us to do the same.

Sure, I still dream of the home we can host larger groups within and create the community we long to raise our children with. I can’t say the desire to move has completely diminished and every day I feel complete peace with where God has us. I mean, in this season, while there’s a bassinet pulled up to the side of our king-sized bed, that has also meant the dog bed has moved to the floor of our closet- the only other available space. A crib skirt in our son’s room hides the printer and office supplies the room once held before it became a nursery. We keep our daughter’s bike beneath the bar in our dining room. Every available square foot must be functional as it is aesthetic. We could have the home we dream of sooner with some sacrifice. If I were to go back to work, we wouldn’t have to wait. But I look at my life and, I just know, I couldn’t trade the freedom I have with my children or the ability to build their foundation for mere square footage. The things I have seen them say and do have proved again and again for me that we have chosen well. Plus Justin is living out answered prayers and overcoming decades of strongholds in the process. He is not the same man he was even a few years ago. And I’m becoming so aware that loving others well doesn’t have to wait, which is unwinding the lies of perfectionism from me. I have faith that one day we will be entrusted more but, for now, how special it is to create a space where others feel welcomed, safe, and loved- no matter its size.

4. Who you are at home, is who you are.

According to Phylicia Masonheimer, “The old saying ‘home is where the heart is’ is biblically true. At home, we are our truest, rawest selves. Our hearts are on display.”

This wasn’t even the main idea of an entire chapter- just an idea to support the importance of establishing spiritual discipline first when stewarding our homes because it permeates every part of who we are and what we do- but it stood out to me because it was so convicting. Do you know how many of my weakest moments flashed before my eyes as I read this? Why is it that the ones we love most often see the ugliest, most exhausted sides of us? We hold it together all day long for the world, and then we come home and crash with the ones we’re called to first. Feeling my heart racing (and not immediately remembering to offer myself the same grace God does), I sent the quote to a friend I have who helps sharpen my iron, as the Scripture says (Proverbs 27:17).

She laughed out loud as she asked me why I had to send her something like that because now she felt the same conviction. Immediately she was flooded with thoughts of every awful time she’s yelled at her kids, joked inappropriately, or impatiently rage-cleaned the house. I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t the only one who heard the statement and suddenly determined that I was the worst person in the world.

The more we thought about it together, the more Paul’s sentiment from 1 Timothy 1:15 came to mind: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” 

You can always count on The Message version to really break it down: “Here’s a word you can take to heart and depend on: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I’m proof—Public Sinner Number One—of someone who could never have made it apart from sheer mercy. And now he shows me off—evidence of his endless patience—to those who are right on the edge of trusting him forever. Deep honor and bright glory to the King of All Time— One God, Immortal, Invisible, ever and always.”

Our righteousness is as filthy rags before the Lord. There is truly nothing we can do to earn the free gift of grace. All that leaves for me to say is…

Thank you, God, for your grace as you transform me into a homemaker capable of hosting the purity of Your presence so that others can experience my home as a sort of haven.

 

5. Evangelism actually begins at home.

It kind of blew my mind to consider that hospitality is a form of evangelism. It’s natural to distinguish hospitality as inviting others in and evangelism as going out to meet others, but Every Home a Foundation challenged me to consider that going out to others through evangelism is actually with the heart posture of bringing them into the kingdom. So then, why can’t inviting others into our home be with the heart posture of releasing them into the world again equipped to share the kingdom?

The love, belonging, encouragement, training and growth experienced within a house of God equips disciples for evangelism. Before we send anyone out to proclaim the Gospel, we must first invite them in to experience it. So often, we see this as inviting them into the house of God, as in a church building. But why couldn’t it be our homes too, which once served as churches anyway? The very first churches after Pentecost were small assemblies that met within the disciples’ houses. The doors were marked with the Jesus fish often seen on cars today- called the Ichthys- as a way to designate them as a meeting space during Roman persecution.

This idea is for the children and family members raised within our home and then launched out into the world, but it’s also for the ones we invite in to serve and host before releasing again.

Sticky notes line the interior of my copy of Every Home a Foundation,

filled with so many more take-aways I could record here, but I’ll go ahead and stop at five for now. If just these five points have given you something to meditate on, you won’t want to miss the rest of what’s between these hard covers. You don’t have to be a home-maker to be blessed by the information, either. I would recommend it for any new wife learning how to begin stewarding a home, but absolutely for every new mother.

One day our children will tell others what it felt like to grow up within the homes we created for them….

What is it you most hope they’ll say?