House or Home

Walking through our 'old house', I was amazed at how it presented.  How it made me feel.  Or yet, the lack of feelings it created.

That house was a FABULOUS house for our family.  It blessed us and others is so many ways.  It fit us perfectly for that particular season of life.

We had ministries there, friends and family visited, neighborhood 4th of July parades and cookouts, we hosted gatherings, many birthday parties were thrown within those walls, movie nights, dinners, games - so many memories.  So many blessings.

I wondered before we arrived what it would be like to walk the halls, go through the rooms, sit on the window seats.  Would we miss it?  Would we long to return?  How would the kids react? Would it still be 'home' to them?

On one hand it was depressing.  It looks so different, not at all what we left behind.

On the other hand - it was fresh, clean, neutral.

I guess that was partially why it didn't illicit the memories I feared it might.  In many ways, it's not the home we had developed, nurtured over the years.

Our families personality had been obliterated from the heart of that house.

Our red and black kitchen is now beige.  Our chalkboard paint/peg boarded school room is simply, beige. The kids black and purple chalkboard painted bedrooms with matching curtains morphed into.... beige.  My bright colored, handprint decorated craft room has been altered to - you guessed it - beige.  The fun teal and brown basement playroom muted to... beige.

Sensing a theme yet?  The whole house has been impersonalized. Stripped of our 'footprint'.  A shell of what we had created it to be.

Not saying memories don't still exist for our 'old home'.  Today, however, I realized those memories are in our hearts and minds NOT the walls of this building in which we once lived.

Even the kids referred to it as 'the old house'; not home.

In essence, it's not the house that makes a home.  It's us.  Our family.  Being together.  Home is where we are - together.

For now, our home is in the mountains of Wyoming.... and we all like it there.