A - Z Challenge - H: Home

Well, I'm behind already. I suppose it was inevitable. But still, onwards...

This is an edited version of an old post that I wrote in answer to the question, 'Where's home?' and 'What does home mean to you?' Bit of a lengthy answer; it's more of a potted biography I suppose. But home is many things, and not always geographical. 

Home

I am from Derbyshire, a town with a crooked spire and Roman history, celebrated market and too many Tescos. Peak District hills and dales and moors and crags. I am from the county furthest from the sea in a small, crowded island that can sometimes feel big. 

I am from 1930s bay window, back garden photographs, chunky legs and a scowl in front of the conifers in the garden, tiny then, towering last year, now gone. I am from endless summers, droughts and ladybirds, watering the vegetables with bathwater. From snowmen and snow-in-your-wellies and cocoa in blue and white striped mugs. 

I am from bucket and spade, hunt for seashells, run from seaweed, cool wind off the North Sea beach holidays. Caravans and car journeys and endless photographs. I am from pub-lunches and motorbike rides and leapfrogs and awful school dinners. 

I am from 'Jesus' sandals, sensible shoes, gabardine raincoats, falling down white socks, wonky fringe, cheese and beetroot sandwiches, skipping ropes, grazed knees and space hoppers. From shoe buckles snagging on the sofa cushions, wax crayons and writing stories in tiny notebooks. From beans on toast, pikelets with melted butter and canned fruit and blocks of ice cream in the freezer compartment. My mum's rice pudding; the best in the world. 

I am from Sunday lunch at Grandma's, chicken and gravy and endless grown up conversation and rhubarb-from-the-garden suet pudding (lines your stomach). I am from rocking chairs and setting lotion and cigarette smoke and bags of sweets and leaving my blanket behind and insisting that Daddy goes back to fetch it. I am from please-and-thank-you, kiss-it-better and it-won't-always-be-dark-at-six and if-at-first-you-don't-succeed... I am from reserved and English and stiff-upper-lip and a-smile-costs-nothing.

I am from Enid Blyton and Helen Dore Boylston and Nancy Drew and Jill's Gymkhana. I am from Bunty magazine, and my brother's Beano and then Just Seventeen and Mizz and Cosmopolitan. From shopping with Mum, saving up for things, giving things to Dad to mend rather than buy new. 

I am from Listen with Mother and Magic Roundabout just before the news with Dad and Andy Pandy after lunch with Mum and Mary Mungo and Midge. From longing for a Blue Peter Badge and from (the innocence of) Jim'll Fix It and Why Don't You...? Jacques Cousteau's Undersea World and the dull bit at the end of The Two Ronnies that grown ups found the funniest. From staying up late on New Year's Eve watching The Sound of Music for the very first time. 

I am from eager to please at school, english lessons easy and maths lessons hard. I am from too much homework and ice on the inside of the bedroom window above my desk. 

I am the bullied, the insecure, the prize-winning, the fearful, the prefect, the distrustful. I am from adolescence in the company of boys, not girls (much more straightforward that way). 

I am from hotbrushes, big hair, hairspray and Sodastream. From rolled up jacket sleeves and 'Flashdance' and 'Pretty In Pink' and 'The Breakfast Club'. From Slinkies and Sindy dolls and Pippa and thinking that ET was not remotely cute and being unmoved when he nearly died. 

I am from Atari tennis blip-blip electronic games and wishing for a Donkey Kong. From three TV channels and no video. From the girl with the teddy and blackboard and the National Anthem when the telly was finished. I am from the days when we had our first phone installed and it went bring bring and we sat on the stairs in a draught to talk. 

I am a teenager in the middle of a crowd on a hot, hot day listening to an evangelist talk about Jesus Christ. I am the only one there. I am lost and I am found. I am one of those stumbling past rows of knees to get to the aisle, self-consciousness forgotten, to turn my tearstained face upwards and say yes, please to the One who really saw me. 

I am from church youth group, boyfriends, church camps in the Lake District, exam-passing, teacher-pleasing (mostly) and the first in the family to go to university. I am from Bronte, Hardy, Clare, Keats and Shelley. From Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jonson, Rosetti, Milton and Byron. 

I am from churchy, goody-goody, black and white, right and wrong, finding out about the grey the hard way. I am from broken heart, church work disillusionment and faith on the back burner. From broken friendships, loneliness and confusion. I am from knowing what I want, not knowing what I want, changing my mind, changing direction, worrying my parents. 

I am from leaving the country, seeing the world, running from decisions, backpacking, bewildering long haul flights and sleeping on coaches, brushing teeth out of a window, getting by with language, camping under the stars; geyser fields and sunrises, waterfalls and air so thin it's hard to breathe. Condors and sloths and llamas and butterflies and cockroaches. From the beauty and the grime and the wonder and the riches and the poverty. 

I'm from Derbyshire, Newcastle, Liverpool, London. From old friends, new friends, new town, new university, new dreams. Anatomy, physiology, sociology, psychology. More exams, romance, wedding magazines, diamond rings and flowers. I'm from happy, holding hands, holidays and freedom. I'm from uniforms, paperwork, hospitals, making splints, holding hands, mending bodies, teaching skills, ticking boxes, climbing the ladder, striving, achieving, trying so hard but wondering what else there must be. 

I'm from sentimentality, memories, diaries, journals, fragments of stories. Creative writing, photography, bereavement, childbirth. I am from fractured sleep and crying babies and confusion and despair. I am from post natal depression, lost and lonely and fearful, and then found once again and comforted and held tight.

I am from coming home to church and finding that it was not God who went away but me. I am back to live in the house with the beautiful back garden with the people who mean the world to me. 

I'm from middle age and aching joints and calorie counting and calorie ignoring, comfort-eating and exercise regimes started and discontinued. I am from self-conscious and struggling, from the land of low self-esteem and distorted self-image; but I am awake again to the truth of how much I am loved, and I want to tell the world: if I am loved like this, then you are too. 

I am from gratitude and awe and tearful thanksgiving. I am from hands-in-the-air worship and head-bowed in prayer. From day-by-day, hour-by-hour keeping going, carrying on, doing my best, starting again, not giving up. 

I am from closed-fist to open-palm, from rags to riches, from darkness to light.

I am wife and mother and daughter and sister and friend. 

I am a child of God. 

Home...

I am at home today. No need to go out until the school run. My kind of day. 

Home is a shoes off, slippers on kind of place. A ‘put the kettle on and have a biscuit’ kind of place.  A ‘there’s a knack to flushing the downstairs loo’ kind of place.

Continued...

I am so pleased to be over at Amy Boucher Pye's lovely blog, AmyBoucherPye.com today. Click here to read the rest of my post and others in her excellent series all about home and what it means to us. 

Better still, get yourself a copy of Amy's delightful book in which she takes a humorous and poignant look at life on both sides of the Atlantic. It's well worth a read.  

Children of God

Hey, God. Listen to this:

'But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.'
John 1:12

You said, '...the right to become children of God' didn't you?

A while ago I was watching my littlest daughter Katy as she made her way into a party she was going to. We were a bit late (as always) and so the room was already full of boisterous five year olds when she went in. There were half a dozen grown ups there as well, and I felt quite awkward making conversation for the short time it took Katy to take off her coat and shoes and locate the birthday girl to offer her the slightly dog-eared gift that had been enthusiastically cradled all the way there. I was happy to kiss her goodbye and retreat to the safety of the car for an hour or so until it was pick up time.

Katy, on the other hand, skipped into the room with confidence despite the fact that a game was already underway and the children were in two teams.

How intimidating would that be for me? Oh dear, whose team to join?  Will they want me? Will I upset the numbers? Maybe I'd better sit this one out. What if I'm not welcome... Nope, none of that. She beamed from ear to ear and she made herself at home straight away.

It didn't cross her mind that she should be cautious or anxious; she just bustled on in and made herself at home. She felt secure. She just accepted that she had a right to be there. She felt safe and accepted and she was comfortable in her belonging.

Every night after school Katy throws her shoes off in the hallway and marches off to demand a snack. She is home.

The other day her big sister was off school (because the day before she was sick on the Deputy Head - but that's another story) and they missed each other badly. All day Lizzie was asking, 'When will Katy be home?' and when she arrived back Kate dived through into the kitchen shouting, 'Lizzie, I'm home! Everything's alright - I'm here!

She is so sure of her welcome. And not just at home, where you'd expect it.

I've seen her do it over and over again. When joining the rest of the group at swimming lessons, or in gymnastic class or with her schoolmates, a classroom situation which could easily be so fraught with angst. For example, a few months ago Katy was off school for a hospital appointment and she missed a day at school. On her return the following morning she took her seat at the table announcing in a loud voice, 'I'm back, everyone. Have you missed me?'

I am in awe of such simple confidence. Long, long may it last. I could never bring myself to ask such a question for fear of the possible answer. Katy has such security in her membership, her equality, her personal value - her right to be there - that she exudes contentedness and enjoyment of her surroundings and people respond warmly to it. She is pleased to be there.

And it made me think.

'But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.'

That's me. I believe, I accept. I therefore have the right to be a child of yours.

I am a child of the living God. I can approach you ('Bold, I approach, th'eternal throne...da dah, da da da...' and so on) and I can say, 'Hello Daddy, here I am!'. I don't have to sidle in the room, or creep, or cringe. I'm not there under sufferance, or just visiting, or by some loophole. I am loved and wanted and encouraged to come in and make myself at home.

I am allowed to approach. I am a member. I am accepted.

I am welcome.

I have the right to be your daughter. Not because of anything I did; far from it. But whatever the terrible and amazing equation, I have the right. You gave it to me, because you want me in the family.

This is my fundamental identity; I might be a wife and a mother and a daughter and a sister and a friend and a...a...whatever else I might be, but most significant is that I am a child of God. This is Who I Am.
That's a membership that beats all others. I need not be intimidated at the school gates, or in a roomful of strangers, or at the grown-up equivalent of the fifth birthday party. My Dad is indeed bigger than their dads.

Chin up, then.

I belong with you. Yes, I am here, for now, because this is where you want me, but I truly belong elsewhere.

My home is with my Father, and my family, and one day when it's time I'll be going home, where I am sure of a welcome like no other.

I will kick off my shoes and walk boldly into that house and I'll find my snack.

Thankyou.

The place where the beauty comes from

It's the wonderful CS Lewis again.  Really, I must read more of his stuff, and not just 'The Screwtape Letters' and Narnia. The way he seems to drop wonderful gems of wisdom and insight so effortlessly  into his letters and musings delights me. What about this one:


"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back."
— C.S. Lewis (Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold)


What did you think when you heard him say that, Father?  I bet you smiled.  And now this exceptional man is with you; he's home.  I wonder if it's just as he thought it would be. 


I love this picture.  'The place where all the beauty came from...the longing for home.'
There are days when I really understand what he means; CS Lewis just sums it up for me. The days where things are too hard, require too much effort; when failure seems inevitable, and the simplest task is daunting.  Days like that make me long for a world where the struggling stops.  I don't mean that I have a desperately hard life - I know that I don't.  I know that there are many millions of people in this world who'd swap with me in an instant and I wouldn't want to swap with them.   What I'm talking about is the hamster-wheel feeling that I get occasionally where I feel that I'm running to stand still, and most of the stuff that I'm struggling with is trivia that's getting in the way of the important stuff.  


John Keats said in his poem, 'Ode to a Grecian Urn':


'Beauty is truth, truth, beauty - that is all
ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'


...and I think he got it right, didn't he?  Because you are Beauty, you are Truth, and you are all we need to know.  You are the source of all that is good, lovely, beautiful, awesome, impressive, true. I should look up more, instead of looking down.  Instead of watching my feet in case I trip or step in something, I should look up towards your beauty.  Instead of concentrating on where I am, or where I've been, I should concentrate on where I'm going. I spend so much time looking over my shoulder, down at the ground, or in at myself that I sometimes don't see what CS Lewis saw.  I get an occasional glimpse; those moments when I'm tired, despairing, defeated - those are the times when I am immensely comforted that this is not all there is.  But to live in this world, patiently, while knowing that I'm not at home here, that home is somewhere else, where one day I'll be; that's amazing.  I'm not there yet.


I hang onto the things of this world too much.  I like being here.  Today the sun is shining and the plants are growing and the sky is blue, and it's a Friday and in about half an hour I'll be going to pick Bryan up from the station - so in my world things are generally ok.  Pretty good, even.  I'm planning which wine we'll open, what we'll watch on the telly and what I'll cook for tea.  The children are in the garden with a picnic and at the moment they're not squabbling.  When all is well, I think I can cope.  I think I can do it on my own, and that's where I come unstuck.  That's where I forget CS Lewis' vision of Home and actually I've made myself comfy here, living my little life with only occasional reference to you. I have so much that I rate so highly and yet in your eyes it amounts to nothing. I surround myself with things and people and opinions and ways of passing my time and yet there's a much much bigger picture that CS Lewis saw that I only glimpse occasionally. All my 'stuff' isn't worth anything in comparison. 

And then there are times when it all goes wrong and I turn to you, anxiously searching for you like a toddler who looks up to realise that the legs next to her are not her Mummy's legs after all. I can't handle it because I am not equipped; all the 'stuff' isn't worth anything when I need real help. Only you will do, and I run to you from whichever outpost of my life I've been exploring.  I dash back home out of the rain. I find my shelter in you and wonder why I ever left, only to set out again without a backward glance when the sun comes out next time.   I am such a Rainy Weather Friend. 


There's a place, isn't there.  A place where I'll be one day and I'll stay.  I imagine it might be like holding a baby in your arms for the very first time after giving birth - this little miracle held close, smeary and slippery and screaming and screwed up; you meet for that momentous first time, never held in your arms before, never heard, never seen, but this little creature is oddly familiar.  It feels familiar, it smells familiar; it's as if you've known each other all your life even though you've only just met.  I reckon that might be how it is in Heaven.  When I get there I'll look about and recognise it from the glimpses; from the moments that you left the door open a crack so I could see in.  It will be the source of all beauty; how could it be other, since it is where you are? 


And as CS Lewis said, it'll be like coming home.


Amen, Lord Jesus.