feels like home.

With two babies under 17 months I have spent more time than ever before within the walls of my own home.  Instead of the constant "cabin fever" I feared I'd experience,  I've been surprised by how often I can feel the beauty of it all.

Babies, I believe, are especially close to God. There is something sacred about an infant experiencing things for the first time, something sacred too about being the one that they rely completely on for life.  So much so that it can easy overwhelm my emotions and leave me feeling anxious and unsure of myself. 

But through the days, weeks, moments and hours that have followed our second son's birth I have often found strength, beyond my own, certainly, to somehow call back the perspective that allows me to love and care when I have nothing left to give. 

What happens inside the walls of a home, as I learn and grow with my children, is truly spectacular. It is not, perhaps, the kind of spectacle the world today applauds. But in truth,  it is beautiful, it's sacred, it's unique, it is elating and miraculous. It's humbling and heart wrenching, light and tremendously heavy. It is so much and yet it can feel like I’m doing so little. It is emotional. 

As I was pacing our bedroom with my baby last night the words from a song in Les Miserables kept running into my thoughts,

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”

It has given me a little peek into the depth of God's greatness;

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,  that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

                                                                                                       -John 3:16 (emphasis added.) 

This painting was inspired by my focus on the joy and happiness that home, my home and my roles in it, has brought to me.

home sweet home.

After three emotional years of waiting to be parents, I suddenly found myself at home constantly after we had our first child in April 2012 and my concept of home began changing almost as suddenly as our lives.

Everything in my world was instantly contained within the four walls of our home and this drastic change brought the inevitable evolution of what "home" became to me.

Home:

refuge, prison, workplace, sanctuary. 

I realized that home is so much more than whatever the walls that physically contain it look like.  It is anywhere you and your family are, anywhere they need you and you meet that need. 

Being home changed me too.  In a way  I’d never experienced before, my life wasn’t my own.  I didn’t slip into my new roles as smoothly as I’d anticipated and the change was, at times, surprisingly painful.  Things that had once defined the time I spent at home faded from the forefront and I lived most of my days in ‘survival mode’. I’d never had someone need me so desperately; it’s a beautiful and overwhelming experience. 

My concept of home continues to evolve with each day's experience. 

And so,  I’m trying to capture the beauty, inconsistency and uniqueness that makes each house a home.