Home is where...

August 15, 2023
Beloved:
          Having lived here several months I’m already rearranging. My original setup doesn’t suit me like I thought it would, but neither does the chaos I’ve created with all this reorganization.  Grrrr, blast this state of betwixt and between!  This place where so much must be set to rights before anything good or useful can begin . . . or so my heart and mind would like me to believe.
I do love a tidy space, caddies and cubbies for every bit and bobble.  I have to wash the dishes to work at the kitchen table, neaten up the coffee table to use my laptop on the couch, as well as remind myself that a messy house is not a moral failing, any more than a clean one is a virtue.  Mine’s a quirk of personality, a preference, a hobby.
          Home.  I’m grateful for this landing place, softer than I could have hoped for.  It would be practically perfect in every way, if only the dog would sleep through the night.  Something about 4:30 AM pulls her outside just to sniff the air and look around.  No one is sleeping until she’s checked it out.  She has her habits as much as I have mine as we make this place home.  
          Home, I’ve realized lately, is where you aren’t surprised to wake up.  Every morning is still a surprise to me.  Home is where you no longer notice what it smells like because it smells like you.  My closets especially still smell like something altogether other — faintly of cats and something very, very dry.  Home can also be a memory, as I found this week in a meal brought over by a church member:  pork chop, green beans and scalloped potatoes.  Those potatoes transported me to the kitchen table when my kids were little where they positively ate them up.  I was most truly fed and most truly grateful.
          So I invite you to be grateful for whatever experience of home you have today.  Whatever Love you find there is the Love that finds us all.
  
~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette