Childhood Life

Childhood life

For me home is love and acceptance.  Home is a place to retreat from the world and recover from the situations that challenge us and cause us to struggle.  My first home was 3813 Brightview Drive. 

This is where I called home for the first 19 years of my life.  It was a 3 bedroom track home in a suburb of Los Angeles.  Growing up in this house it seemed to have plenty of room for my parents and my older brother.  I had my own room, with a window that cranked outward, that looked out onto our back patio.  The front yard had an orange tree, left over from the grove that was turned into a series of track homes.  The back yard had a lemon tree.  The back yard, bordered by fences, formed a U shape that provided room for play.   Tiger and A.J. my dogs, made their home in this backyard (they also ran away from this backyard.)

I remember this home well – my mother and father’s 25^th wedding anniversary party, the bridge club where couples would come and play bridge into the night, playing basketball in the driveway in front, throwing the tennis ball at the wooden garage door that swung out with thick long springs.  I remember learning to ride a bicycle in the front yard.

But this home was sold by my mother about 5 years after my parents got divorced.  Part of the divorce settlement was that after I turned 18, that either the house was to be sold, or my father was to get the ½ of the appraised amount, at the time of the divorce.  I think that my parents’ divorce and the selling of this home, began to shift my feeling of home.  My parents’ divorce caused me to grow up, through the adolescent years in a broken home.

With the money my mother made from the sale of my first home, my mother bought a brand new home about 20 miles away.  But by this time, my family had switched.  My second family, a church, accepted me, loved me and cared for me and through them, specifically a Sr. High fellowship group, my home became the church.  I didn’t know it at the time, but God had worked through this home to help me sense God’s love in a deep way.  Through them family and home was redefined.  Since then I’ve felt at home in churches, made my home in churches.

But years later, home was redefined again.  It took place when I married and when we bought our first home then home again shifted.  Home was where Lynn and I would start our own family – and it was our home, even though we paid the bank a mortgage it was our home with our things and home became that place to retreat to relax and to be a family again.

Then Home shifted again, it shifted when God called me to Texas.  Now with two children, we have been struggling to sell a home after the economic crisis and we have made our home in an apartment, with only 1/3 of our things.  But this is not really home to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I feel fortunate to have a roof over my head for me and my family, many have felt the economic crisis in a deeper way, but with much less room, and without 2/3 of our things, our home seems as thought it is not complete.  I feel like we are living in a surrogate home that does not provide a retreat or refuge from the world and the challenges of ministry.  Again, many have much less, but the challenge of selling a home and paying for both a mortgage and rent has also put our family in an economic challenge.

I feel fortunate for some financial help from the church I serve, but the delay – now 16 months in apartment – has left me with – home deficit.  And I feel thin in emotional wellbeing and wonder how my children will be affected by not only my thinness but by their own sense of home.  Apartment living for us has not provided a real neighborhood, playmates and room to retreat themselves.

What I have learned is that home is also a place to recharge.  A place where family and friends can come to visit and feel comfortable and where I can surround my own family with love and acceptance.