We are doing a bit of redecorating in our home as we have older kids who leave fewer fingerprints on furniture or use the couch as a springboard for their latest acrobatic exhibition. As I sat flipping through the home decorating catalog, each image more perfectly decorated than the last, I felt my chest tighten, my posture change and my heart began to race. Did I prefer the French country? Was I more city and sleek? What about a more farmhouse look? What I chose would determine the look in my home for many years to come.
The catalog was beautifully filled with heartwarming phrases like Home is where our story begins or Home is the starting place of love, hope and dreams. I couldn’t put it down. After days of sifting through catalogs and searching online, feeling the pressure of now knowing that Simplicity is the new sophistication and that Love grows best in homes like these, I had an epiphany. Nothing I could purchase or place on the walls will help those I love get to heaven. It doesn’t matter what couch we gather on, or which lights we choose. It matters that we gather and that we be the light.
I remember back to when my husband and I first got married. I was in college, and he had just graduated. We had so very little in the way of possessions but so much in the way of love and grace. It radiated from us, and we continue to live life grateful for that gift. We had a square four-legged folding table and folding chairs with a tablecloth over it as our dining room table. We had a velvet (yes, velvet) tiger-striped couch from Goodwill with a cover and a coffee table from a garage sale. Our lights were gathered similarly, and the art on our walls was collected from pictures we had taken of each other, our adventures, and family and friends. And we felt rich.
As a young wife with a heart of hospitality, I invited his coworkers over for weekday meals. My husband worked for a small startup in Boston at the time, and the CEO and his wife had invited us out to dinner, so we shared an invite back to our home. We gathered around our little table and laughed on our couch, and a good friendship was formed. Not once did I feel an inequality, but rather just relished in the reality that our home was a place of welcome.
Home is such an important place. It is my favorite place to be. I love to travel. I love visiting with friends and certainly I love sitting quietly in the chapel spending time with Jesus. But for me, and for my family, the home is the place of most frequent encounter with the Lord. It is where virtue is honed.
In the home, we see mercy lived out. Joy, suffering, laughter, charity, service, sadness and compassion show themselves daily. No catalog can offer these for sale. And yet these gifts are the ones that make a house truly a home.
I am convicted that these are the comfort foods my children will seek when they come home. Of course, they love mom’s chicken noodle soup and homemade bread, but if it was served with aloofness and ambivalence, it would taste bitter and sad to them. It is engagement and authenticity that our children seek, and it is that same vulnerability and relationship that we need to welcome others into.
Our “guests” will encounter the Lord when we invite them into the everyday of our homes, and when there’s less worry about the stain on the couch and more focus on sharing stories. When we welcome everyone as Christ, we allow them to see us in the beautiful reality of our unique family dynamic, and it is that which they have come to see. Remember, you can’t get to know a couch, but you can get to know a person!
As I look about my home, I see our rosaries hung on a wall. Memories of gathering with those fill my heart. I see my images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary hung with a melted corner on a frame from a prayer candle and remember the night I fell asleep while holding vigil for one of my children. I see a staircase that has been used for countless mattress slides, kids running up and down, and, yes, there are some nicks in the paint here and there, but even when my children are not home, I look over and can still see their little selves going up and down. (Thank you, Lord, for the gift of them.)
We have a table that has gathered both family, friends and strangers. Couches that are mismatched but have gathered so many over the years, playing board games, sipping tea and praising the Lord through it all. There are images of our patron saints gathered on the wall in our den and every morning I am reminded to ask for their intercession. The interior of my mother’s heart is reflected in the interior design of my home and I am grateful.
This article also appeared at the Catholic Times.
