Quality Friday: Home

My parents home. April 2007.

Jeff's been out of town this week for a bit and is returning this evening. Yesterday, after a very busy day at school, H and I packed up and went to my parents for a slumber party. We've done this from time to time in the past when J is away and it's just him and I. I enjoy eating dinner and watching tv with my parents and watching H run around from room to room, getting into whatever sort of mischief he can. One of his most recent favorite activities is feeding their dog treats.

My parents home will always be my home. This is where I grew up, this is where my roots are. This is my home too.

This is the home that I sat reading for hours in the living room and sat practicing piano for years, watched out the living room window for friends to arrive or pick me up.

This is the home where I grudgingly helped out and did chores like raking the yard, and had more slumber parties than one can keep track of.

This is the home where positive words were spoken and joyful memories made, not just on holidays but by celebrating the everyday.

This is the home where friends were always welcome, no matter what day, time or who they were.

And in so many ways it is still that way, just last weekend we had a "raking-party" and did the fall clean up in the yard, I sent an email Thursday evening and Friday morning I had a note back from my friend Hayley.

What time? What day? I'll be there.

No hesistation. No checking the planner for something better to come up. Just doing and being what I needed her to be right then and right there.

Hayley and I go way back to when I was a glasses and braces wearing fourteen year old and she was a sixteen year old with a car. My parents home has always been a home to her too, my parents love her and love giving her a hard time about whatever is going on in her life from her job to her boyfriends.

And she is just one of many friends who are welcome in their home. Even today.

Their home is much more than a physical place, it is an atmosphere. There is history in this place. Creaks on the floorboards, the dogs nails as he walks across the hardwood floors. The memories of laughter and memories of tears. The dinner time conversation and bedtime prayers. This is much more than a house, it is a home.

So while I am a married woman and own a home and we have children of our own, their home will always be a home to me. And it is my hope that I can shape my home like theirs, not physically, but with the history, the faith and the joy that has been modeled and lives in the walls of that place.