NICOLE STEVENSON
Time for another true confession. In my last blog I confessed my habit of procrasti-cleaning. This time, I confess that I’m a hopeless Fixer Upper fan. I’m the person interacting with the show every step of the way—oohing and ahhing at design choices, laughing out loud at the silly interactions, and shamelessly crying at the reveal. Seeing the exchange between the designers and the families as they discover their new personalized homes gets me every single time. If you ask my teens, they’ll quite possibly roll their eyes—mom is pathetically intrigued with this program.
I love the back stories of the families who are putting their homes into the hands of Chip and Joanna, and I love watching Chip and Joanna interact with and enjoy each other. I love watching the process of turning these homes into personal spaces that meet the individual needs and desires of the families for whom they’re working.
Joanna’s attention to detail and special touches in her design often reflect things about which her clients care deeply. Chip’s joy in creating beautiful, unique pieces that also function to meet needs is always a delight to watch. His excitement over demo day will always mystify me, though. It just looks like exhausting work, but he is a perfect complement for Joanna’s skills, and together they’re not only in the business of renovating houses, they’re in the business of creating homes.
I know for some, the Fixer Upper world with its designs duplicated the world over, has become cliched. I can hear the voices of friends shouting, “Shiplap!” as I write this, and I laugh with them because it’s true; the Gaines’ have left their mark on the world of home decor. What I love about them, though, is more than their trademark designs (and I do love their style). It’s their process, the way they interact with their clients, and the way they interact with each other and their children. Every time they do a renovation reveal, I find myself both laughing and tearing up because the process is so personal.
The most recent episode that left me nearly ugly-crying was the home renovated for two young wheelchair-bound boys. In this home everything was designed with them in mind, from the entry to the amazing backyard created by the Make a Wish Foundation. Nothing was left out and no expense too expensive as the community pulled together to give these boys the home and childhood they deserved. It was all deeply personal and thoughtful, and it took a community to execute.
Home
Home can sometimes be taken for granted. It’s a given. It’s home-base where life happens. It’s usually where family resides together. Home is the place where toddlers learn to obey, teenagers learn to be responsible, and couples learn to communicate. Home is where we keep our clothes and other belongings; it’s where we lay our head, eat our meals, and do our homework or housework. For some it’s also where we execute careers, either in a back office or as a homemaker. We are thankful for it, but we don’t always know just how blessed we are to have it. For most of us, our houses weren’t designed with us in mind, and so we have to learn to thank God for His provision and ask Him to make us content. We have to try to remember how blessed we are, and sometimes that’s an exercise more than an emotion as we live in the daily grind.
For others, home is a dream. It lives off in the future. Whether we’re displaced due to disasters, poor life choices, or economic factors, or whether we’re minors just waiting to age out of the system, we dream of a place to call our own. We dream of having enough clothes to store at all, of having personalized bedrooms, warm meals or the luxury of making food just for the sake of fun.
As an adult I find myself relating to both groups. When I was a kid I moved a lot. At one time I counted 22 houses and 14 schools in 17 years. There were times, growing up, when I didn’t have my own bedroom, and I slept on the couch. In fact, there were times when I did have my own bedroom, but I still felt safer on the couch because I didn’t know the neighborhood and I wanted to hear every sound.
I was usually the new kid at school. While people were kind to me, I wasn’t a part of their collective history. In fact, I didn’t have much of a history of my own from which to draw strength to reach back; my history was that I was always on the outside looking in on other people’s lives. I felt like a permanent guest at this thing we all call life. As a result I was committed to the fact that one day I was going to create a home for my family, to give my kids all the stability I desired growing up, and then stay put!
Now, I’ve been married for 20 years this summer. I’ve lived in the same house for almost 16 of those years, and before that we had one apartment we lived in for four years. My husband had moved around a lot as well, and we just wanted roots. Our kids attended the same school K–8, and our son will begin his second year at the same high school he started in later this fall. The home we have now is a fixer upper that we’ll spend the rest of our lives upgrading and maintaining—praying to not take it for granted. We’ve had some rough times working on the house, and some really fun times planning and creating spaces that reflect us.
As I reflect on the years I’ve lived in both of these groups—the rootless child and the rooted adult—what I never expected was that while all the stability and longevity in my current house has been a great blessing and provision of God, it’s not what has fundamentally given me home.
Home Is Where the Heart Is
Here comes another cliche’; ready? “Home is where the heart is.”
I know, it’s totally predictable—and yet it’s true. I do believe that God designed us to need stability, provision, and a dwelling place. He created us to nest, to design, to care for something. I’m not minimizing this fact. It’s a wonderful thing that we all need! Yet our greatest need in all of life is Him, and it’s in Him that we really learn what home is.
The truth is, even if we grew up in the most stable family with the best houses designed for our every need, none of us actually have home until we have life in Jesus. When we are born again and indwelled by the Holy Spirit, we are adopted into God’s family, and we have home no matter where we lay our heads at night.
If you don’t believe me, just consider the traveling missionaries and their families who thrive with God’s people all over the world, or our apostles who gave their lives to traveling to spread the gospel. Consider Jesus Himself who said the Son of man has no place to lay His head at night (Matthew 8:19–20; Luke 9:57–58), and yet He was not left empty or without a fundamental core identity.
The home we find in God is, in a sense, a renovating home. It’s where we live in a deeply personal and ongoing process of sanctification by His Spirit. It’s ever-changing but always stable because it’s in our union with God that we finally know an anchor for the soul. The home God provides—life in Him—is the place where we truly learn, mature, and develop a real core which we carry out into the world with us no matter where we lay our heads at night. The household of God is something we carry with us in our life. Our home is where God dwells, and when we are born again God dwells within us. This reality is what chisels away at our fundamental sense of being alone, forgotten, or orphaned in this cruel world.
Closing Escrow
Eternal life is home for us, and it begins at the moment of belief in the true gospel of Scripture (Eph 1:13-14). Scripture makes clear that we enter into eternal life now, on this side of eternity, when we believe God’s testimony concerning His Son.
“If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. And this is the testimony, God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:9-13).
Notice the tenses here. If we believe God’s testimony about His Son (not Ellen G. White’s or anyone else’s testimony) we can know that we presently have eternal life. By its definition, eternal doesn’t stop and start again. We have eternal life both now and forever. We are raised with Christ, born of God, and walking in the Spirit (these are not metaphors— they are spiritual realities). When we believe the true gospel, escrow is closed! Home is ours!
Home is where the Father is
Even with the present reality of our salvation, we long for the redemption of our bodies and to be in the physical presence of our Lord.
“And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:23-35).
Even in our state of waiting, longing, and hoping in that final day of redemption, we see in Scripture that we do this in the present state of having been saved. We do it from our present eternal life as the firstfruits of the Spirit. Our hope is not a wish. It is the patient waiting of assurance in the fulfillment of the promises made by the one true faithful promise keeper, our God:
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going” (John 14:1-4).
Jesus says that He goes to prepare a place for His people. In a sermon on this passage, Pastor Gary Inrig once said that he believes this preparation is a personal one. Jesus knows each one of us; He is our designer, and He knows our uniquenesses. Pastor Gary said he couldn’t prove it from Scripture, but he believes that every single dwelling place God creates for us will be unique to each of us and will reflect His intimate knowledge of us. I join him in this belief. As thoughtful and gracious and generous as Chip and Joanna Gaines are in their designs for their families, our God is abundantly exceedingly more personal and creative! I cannot wait to see what He has in store for His people!
Come Home
If you find yourself wondering what it’s like to have home, to have a place where you’re loved so deeply and consistently that it fundamentally changes who you are and how you live in this world, if you find yourself wondering what it’s like to be free from looking for where you belong or why you’re even here, then to you I say, come home!
False religions will always create a counterfeit “home”. They’ll tell you that you belong with them and then tell you how to toe the line to fit in and not be rejected, but that’s not true home. That’s merely a renovated prison. It’s a dysfunctional home that demands obedience for acceptance and that creates unreasonable and irrational rules then moralizes them and uses them as a standard to determine your acceptance and worth.
God’s household is fixed, it’s stable, it’s eternal, and it’s kept by Him and for Him. Our Father is not fickle, He will not toss you out. He will “come alongside” you and show you who you are in Him and will transform your broken heart, jaded and guarded by stone, into a heart of flesh that responds to Him and that can live in a broken world loving others for Him no matter the personal risk to you because in Him you are safe.
God created you to need Him. If you don’t already trust Him, then all you need to do now is know your need for Him, see His provision for you, read and believe His word (the gospel of John or the book of Ephesians are great places to start), and then entrust yourself for all eternity to the God who has a beautiful and deeply personal home for you.
As Joanna Gaines always says as she opens the door to her families seeing their personalized home for the first time, I say to all you who believe, “Welcome Home”. I’m honored to be your sister. †
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