home

Our church is creating a "family Christmas tree". They asked that each family provide an ornament for the tree that represents them, along with an explanation for a scrapbook. I knew immediately that I would make our ornament, and that it would be a house of some sort. I found this ornament on Pinterest and it spoke to me.

When Rick & I married 26+ years ago, and formed our little branch of the Z family, we had no idea where our journey would take us. We only knew that we wanted to take the journey together, for better or worse... you know the drill! We didn't know that God would provide us with three amazing kids. Nor did we know that our journey would place us in 5 (so far!) different homes in 3 (so far!) states. What we did know was that wherever we were, we would create a home for our family. A place where our children felt safe and loved, a place where our friends (and theirs!) could gather to laugh & cry, eat together, study, pray, play board games....

Home.

And whether it was a two bedroom apartment, with hand me down furniture and 80s mauve and blue country decor, a 1960s split level with a leaky roof and broken toilet, where kraft macaroni and cheese and applesauce were daily fare, a temporary apartment with rented furnishings (even silverware!), a freshly built colonial, with the Rocky Mountains as our backdrop, or a Texas sized brick house with quilts hanging on every empty wall, all have been home to us.

Now, as we celebrate our final Christmas before we become empty nesters, we watch our children begin to establish homes of their own. My prayer is that home will always be a place of comfort and happiness for them. And we will go back to where we began, just the two of us, with our arms and our home always open and waiting for their visits.