Home-making
When we bought this house, we spent the first 30 days frantically preparing it for our move. Adam and I look back and laugh – in the first 24 hours, we painted the inside of the garage! Why did we do that? No one knows, but I guess it felt good to do at the time.
Then we spent weeks scraping popcorn off the ceiling, removing the horrible closet in the living room, re-finishing drywall and painting. New carpet, new closets, new tile by the front door – everything was getting a refresh from its 1974 ways.
After moving in, we ripped out and remodeled our guest bathroom, and now we’re in the process of tackling the kitchen. As anyone who owns a home knows, the to-do list is endless and the projects we dream of doing can quickly whisk away our life savings and our weekends. We’ve lived here for about four months and they have flown by in a whirl of projects.
However, making a home out of our 1974 farmhouse is exciting and fulfilling and means much more than paint colors and Pinterest. Home-making is opening our arms wide and daring to dream – believing that new kitchen countertops will be perfect for making cookies with baby Nicholses, that our pretty guest bathroom will make family and friends feel welcome, that new carpet will lead to sprawled-out movie-watching and game-playing.
We waited and hoped for a home for so long that I can hardly believe our blessings – how did we get this dream and this chance to make a home our own? When we tell friends and family that we spent another weekend working on the house, we usually hear sympathetic sighs – but we don’t feel a need for sympathy. We are blessed and grateful to have a home to make. We are ecstatic that we get the privilege of picking out paint and buying cabinets and removing nasty old appliances. Yes, we get dusty and tired, and yes, sometimes I panic over timelines and budgets and to-do lists. But then I remember popping champagne after long years of praying and hoping. This is the home we are making, the home that God gave us, the home we work for and love so much. I still have professional titles, but “home-maker” is one I cherish.
