be it ever so humble....

No matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my bedroom best.

Well, that sounds good, doesn't it? Before you rush off, thinking I've become someone you shouldn't spend time with, let me explain.

As with most people, home is important to me and I've had what some would consider quite a few of them. When I was small, home was a house in a typical little "Mayberry" town in Illinois. I loved that house, but not because of it's spaces or the way it was decorated. I loved it because our family was still intact when we lived there. It was a place filled with love, safety, laughter and ease.

After that my mom and I lived in a vacation "lodge" in Evergreen Colorado, bouncing around from unit to unit depending on actual vacationers' reservations. (long story-you can ask me about it some time if you're all that interested.)

For one year my mom and I lived in an apartment right across the street from my school. Now I ask you, isn't that every child's dream? To have the joy of staring at your school day in and day out whether school is in session or not?

Later, as a young teen, (for ten months) home was a cabin in Alpena, Michigan and for almost another year I made my bed in a Christian community in Minneapolis.

For 3 1/2 months my address was a manor house in England and I lived with 6 girls in a trailer in a campground in Spain. The beautiful Mediterranean Sea was on one side of the campground and the Barcelona Sewer System on the other. (I'm sure you can imagine the smells that wafted through the area depending on which way the wind blew.)

I had a tiny apartment all to myself in Estes Park, Colorado and I spent one summer living with 11 other girls in an army tent in the Rockies.

After we married we lived in an apartment above a garage, another apartment that stared Rocky Mountain National Park in the face, and we lived in a teeny tiny cabin on the banks of the Big Thompson River. (Our bedroom was literally the size of our bed!)

After 2 1/2 years of marriage we moved to Indiana. We lived with my brother for 4 months, and two different apartments for 8 years. Then, we rented a house. I loved that place, and the Lord used it to bring a lot of healing and wholeness to my heart. But I learned there that it's not the beauty of a home, nor the furnishings, nor the paint on the walls that fulfill me. It's being with the people I love that make a house a home.

And now? We still live in Indiana. Our house is small; tiny some would say. It's only 1200 square feet-we have 3 bedrooms, a livingroom and an eat in kitchen. I've tried to make the house a welcoming place. The kitchen is painted a warm, happy color; it's bright and happy when the sun shines, and twinkle lights make it cozy and homey when it's gloomy outside. The table only seats 4 comfortably. I admit that is a drawback, but that table....the stories it could tell...I'll save that for another day; for now I'll just say if the house burned down, that table would be one of the things I'd miss the most.

I always thought our livingroom would be the place to hang out in this house... I've worked hard to make it a place that is welcoming, relaxing, warm, and friendly. I've tried to declutter it to get rid of some of the visual noise and have made the guys in my life rearrange the furniture til their backs ached, trying to create a space people would love to visit in.

Our bedroom is the last place on earth I thought people would want to hang out in. It's the last space in the house to "finish". My husband just painted the room and we have yet to find a comforter that can be friends with the walls. There is a treadmill, a sewing machine, our computer and a large desk in the room. It has been impossible thus far for me to make it a cozy, romantic place. It's more like a basement bedroom where all the things that don't fit anywhere else get tossed.

And yet, it seems to be a favorite place for the family. Maybe because of the basement type atmosphere? Whatever the reason, for some strange reason, whenever the 9 of us are together, we often end up here, in the "master bedroom", most of all of us piled on the bed. We lounge around, we laugh, tell stories, and hang out here, in this crazy, un-cozy, un-romantic place.

Which leads me back to the beginning. I think our family loves this bedroom, but not because of the way it's decorated. I think they love it because we can relax here. When we spend time here, we are together, with people we love. It's a place filled with warmth, safety, laughter and ease.