HOME

A few blocks away from us is an old house that was “flipped,” re-done inside and out, and quickly resold. Revamping properties is “big” these days as an investment, but it takes people with energy (and money) to make it happen. As we drove past it over the months of remodeling, it was fun to see a tired structure with a weedy lot turned into an asset to the neighborhood.

I thought of that when I saw this décor sign at a store:

Home is where our story begins.

Before investors came in to that house, it saw many “stories.” But today’s trend is “update”—an idea that is supporting numerous “this old house”-type programs on television.

When I try to connect the dots of this saying to scripture, I’m struck by this truth: a “home” is not just a place to eat and sleep. It’s connections of caring people. The Greek word for “home” is oikos which is also translated “family.” Paul used that term in his letter to his protégé Timothy, saying that children or grandchildren whose mother or grandmother is a widow (and, in those times, likely without financial resources) should “show piety at home and repay their parents” (1 Timothy 5:4 NKJV).

Said another way, if aging and difficult circumstances have left one’s parent in need, the children need to step up, if possible, to where their story began. I honor my husband for the sacrifices he made for his parents as they aged. His dad declined rapidly in his early seventies. His mother, who had never learned to drive, was nearly stranded at their rural home a twenty-minute drive away.

When a small rental house next to ours came up for sale, we scrimped for a down payment and moved them next to us. We also insisted his mother take driving lessons and paid for those.  She fussed and fumed, but survived learning. And when she received her driver’s license in her late 60s, we held a “graduation ceremony” for her, complete with a congratulatory cake and “graduation gown” (one I’d saved after having had to buy it for one of my degrees).

After her husband's death, she remained in that home under our watch-care (and increasing care) until her last year of life, when Alzheimer’s left her so disabled that I could not longer care for her by myself.

My husband parents lived many places during their lives, especially as my husband's dad's main career as a pastor meant moves between parsonages. Thus, my husband had many "homes" in his personal history until the family settled in this town, leaving full-time ministry to take over the aging maternal grandparents' orchard. But for more than half of his life, “home” has been our current house, which he bought with his teacher's salary, and to which he brought me as a bride.

This is where we began our “story” of marriage and family, and where our two children began their “story.” It’s getting old and frayed in places. We’re on our third kitchen floor and the rug has obvious trails of use, plus milk and pet accidents that soaked to the padding. But if walls (and rugs) could talk, oh—they’d talk.

The babies we brought home from the hospital are now grown and have homes of their own. But there’s a special charm in being able to talk to their children about “Nana and Papa’s home.” After all, it’s where their parents’ story began.