Making a Home and Making a Life
With the kids finally all off living their own lives, Tom and I are settling into a life of quiet dinners, work, hospitality, and finding out how much we enjoy an empty nest.We like it. A lot.Margaret Kim Peterson caught my attention in her book, Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life, when she said; "Making a home involves constructing and maintaining an environment in which people can flourish in ways in which God desires for people to flourish."
Making a Home
Our home is transitioning into an updated environment to fit our update lifestyle.One of the now vacant bedrooms has become Tom's study and art room.The old garage is no longer a short-term apartment for an adult child on a college summer break or a young family waiting to move into their own place. It is now my grandchildren's playroom and a place to display my art. (Tom's art gets to be displayed in the living room.)And a few decorating changes are making this empty nest cozy.
If we furnish our homes with cooking and eating and conversation in mind, we will be more likely to live in them in ways that foster nourishment and refreshment and engagement with the routines that sustain the bodies and souls of individuals and of communities.The way to a beautiful home is not to buy, or aspire to buy, lots of expensively beautiful things. Often all it takes to give beauty to a home is that it not be overfilled with too many things of any kind and then that there be just a few objects of special beauty or meaning. Everything else can come from a garage sale, and it will still be a place that is not just comfortable but lovely. - Margaret Kim Peterson
Thank you Ms. Peterson. Those words inspired some decor changes in my dining room. (Note the photo at the top of the page.) Decorating is not my gifting, so I had a friend help me put things old and new together for a fresh look. Everything but the hurricane candlesticks and the vinyl wall lettering was handed down from my parents or gifts from our kids and friends.It's a well-lived-life decor.Gifts and hand-me-downs combined with a few pieces that foster beauty, nourishment, and engagement—with these Tom and I can flourish. With Jesus. With our friends. And with our visiting kids and grandkids.And that, to me, is part of building a spiritual legacy.Are you making a home while you're making a life? Leave a comment below on what that looks like for you.Have a great weekend, Susan."Jesus likes it when we share." -Adelaide, age 3: Pass this along to everybody and their brother. OK, maybe not everybody's brother, but you know . . . all of your friends would be nice.
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