I have lived in twenty-three homes.
That is not a decorating credential. It is more like a confession with moving boxes attached.
Our first home was a custom-built cutie that we sold five years later. Life had taken a radical turn as I quit my job to start a crisis pregnancy center without pay. We said goodbye to what I thought was my dream home and moved to a smaller, fixer-upper in an older part of town.
From there, another move because the fixer upper turned out to be a money pit, and then we headed to Africa where my husband would work in Bible Translation.
Now we’re getting ready to sell number 23.
I’ve cooked in different kitchens; observed light patterns through different windows; and painted front doors (sometimes twice) a myriad of colors. Every beloved kitchen, view, and expressive welcome door eventually became something I would leave behind.
And in the leaving, I learned something I didn’t expect. Moving that many times teaches you a theology about temporary things.
When entire seasons of life can be packed into cardboard boxes and tape, you learn how much home is made in the living, not just the staying.
Moving that many times also taught me a theology about home. Not because home is always the place you stay, but because home is often created by what you carry with you, what you choose to use, and what you make beautiful along the way.
Even in temporary seasons, creating beauty can reflect our Maker.
When Scripture first describes the world God made, it does not begin with scarcity or survival. Creation begins with order, fruitfulness, and beauty. I try to imagine the moment golden light broke into the darkness or the fragile buds that peeked out from forest green leaves as the garden was planted. Or see the first clean and rushing river that flowed out of Eden and carried life into the land.
Then, in the same creation descriptions, Scripture pauses to say the gold of that land was good.
The first picture we are given of life with God is not bare or minimal. The opening scene of Bible shows us a dwelling that is alive and abundant, formed with beauty woven throughout.
And the closing scene of Revelation shows a holy Jerusalem coming down out of heaven having the glory of God, radiant like a rare jewel. Walls of jasper and a city of translucent gold adorned with jewels are what is to come in our final, eternal dwelling.
Splendor is how life with God is introduced to us through the Bible and how eternal life with Christ will look in the end.
So, the in between, the part of history we live on earth now, is like my own earthly dwellings—temporary.
Because We’ve Misunderstood Beauty
But in each home I’ve lived, I set about creating an attractive atmosphere because beauty reflects our Maker.
So maybe splendor is not a luxury we add when the dreams of enough finances, being finally settled, or having “the time” finally arrive.
Maybe beauty is one way God lets His goodness show up in the middle of real life. Like Him creating the garden, maybe we create little gardens all over the world, offering hospitality, comfort, peace, and bounty for our eyes to feast upon.
Our family lived for a season in Equatorial Guinea, Africa. The experience of living in an underdeveloped place unsettled me in ways I didn’t have language for at the time. I saw life lived with far fewer material things than I’d previously considered necessary. I saw people living in one or two room huts with dirt floors and limited access to water.
But once I was enveloped in the rhythms of life there, I realized beauty really was in the eyes of the beholder.
Beauty was expressed differently than perhaps my culture had taught me. Not in accumulation—but in presence, in color and fabric; in dance and singing and food. Loveliness also showed up in how life was shared in community.
I came to realize that beauty is not owned by wealth or comfort.
Home is in the Details
With moving so often, I purposefully set out to create an atmosphere of settled—intentionally forming moments of serenity with cocoon effects—colors with depth, cozy reading corners, and furniture that had a sense of worn history, creating the ambiance of steady and “been right here.”
At one point, I bought heavy artisan-blown Mexican glassware for everyday use to signal to the family that the luxury of hand-made with imperfections were part of life—there’s nothing like a hand-made or hand-crafted item with flaws that says we were not made on an assembly line either.
We are clay in the potter’s hands.
Years later, coming home from college to yet another house, my daughter opened a kitchen cabinet and said, “Ah, home is where the thick glasses are.”
Layering God’s Goodness
The glasses philosophy carried over into our art—some made by the tiny hands of our grandchildren, some created by master artists. Others came from our travels across the world in ministry—pieces that tell our story and remind us of where we’ve been.
I have learned to visually layer God’s goodness and love of beauty into my hectic, unpredictable life.
So as I prepare to sell this current house—the one I once thought would be the last—I find myself still doing the same thing. Layering. Refining. Receiving the splendor of this home differently now, as something I once held for my family and now release for another.
God has generously shared His creative nature across the world—from the snow-covered mountain tops of New Mexico to the orchid-laden vines in the Congolese Rainforest, to the baskets woven on sidewalks in India, to the colorful Texas cow hide rugs on my floor.
After living in an area of Africa where people had little and then returning to the U.S. where people often have more than plenty, I have come to a place of peace about decorating—or nesting—my home. Creative expression takes many forms and looks different from one person to another, shaped by culture, family, preference, and season of life. But it does not have to depend on money, square footage, spare time, or the permanence of where you live. Beauty abounds everywhere because the Lord abounds.
Beauty is not merely something we arrange. It is something we recognize, because God has already placed His creative nature into the world He made.
So use the good stuff today.
If I perish, I perish,
Laurie
