Discovering the Purpose for Our Home

Yesterday, I shared the above photo on Instagram and Facebook, and said something like:  “This is the only spot in our home that is ‘finished’.  And by finished I mean that the pictures are current, the frames have been painted, and I even printed something out from Aliza Latta that I love…” (click here for the free printable she designed)…”

While I don’t think our homes will ever be finished, I often feel overwhelmed by my desire to want it to look and feel finished.  Decorations hung, furniture in rooms, painted walls, good organization.  We move at least every three years, and now with four children it takes awhile before I feel settled.  There just isn’t the time necessary, or the budget, to devote to decorating each room the way I’d like.

I like pretty things.  I like pretty spaces.  I enjoy creating things for my home and doing it in an economical way.

For Christmas, my sister-in-law gave me a copy of Myquillin Smith’s book, The Nesting Place.  Myquillin has coined the phrase: ” It doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful“.

There is so much freedom in this for me.

I’m not a perfectionist by nature, but it would always bug me when something was just a little bit off, especially things that I had worked hard to create.  Curtains that weren’t hemmed straight, pillow covers that I had pieced together from scraps of fabric (trying to be frugal), only to find that there wasn’t enough fabric in the end and spots on the seams were gathered oddly. Furniture I had painted where drips of paint were obvious.

Myquillin’s book provided me with lots of inspiration on how to decorate, but also on how to create a home that suits the needs of my family and serves others who may enter its doors.  (And, I highly recommend it!)

On the inside cover of the book, my sister-in-law wrote:  “May this book provide lots of inspiration as you create your ‘nest’ centered not on perfection but on the Perfect One.”

I have thought about this over and over during the past eight weeks that we’ve been living in our home.  Our home that is far from perfect, not decorated yet, and will probably always be a work in progress.

I may not have time or money to decorate as quickly as I’d like to make the beauty I enjoy, but I do have the means necessary to center my home on the Lord.

I can create an atmosphere of love where my children will find security and acceptance.

“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a fattened ox and hatred with it.” -Proverbs 15:17-

We can open our doors and welcome new friends, and old, and provide a place of openness and comfort.

“Show hospitality to one another without grumbling…in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”  -1 Peter 4:9,11-

If our hearts on centered on the Perfect One, then our home will be a place where others will (hopefully) come to know the Perfect One a little bit more from being here.

That is my desire for our home.

Whether it’s me, my husband, my children, a family member, a stranger, a friend–I want people to know God better by being in our home.  And then I want them to go out from here with a deeper desire to make God known.

Yes, I want it to be beautiful, and I’m going to work to make it beautiful in ways that work for our family right now.

But my deeper desire is to make it a place where the eternal beauty of Christ is magnified.