I have been doing some stuff to my room lately. My goal is to turn it into a cozy space rather than it remaining like a closet as I have treated it that way for many years.

White boards are wonderful, side note haha.

I’m learning to stretch out in my space, internally and externally, with a growth mindset, trying new things in the process.

Usually, these things used to make me want the old, but they are a part of a mission, to cultivate homeliness.

Home is where the heart is, and the heart can take away or add to it in so many ways. To me home is why you can be at peace at the end of the day, and where there is family to be enjoyed, even if they are not in person.

Some people have magnificent homes, and others have meager shacks. Honestly, regardless of the size of a house some people learn, better than others, to abide in their spaces and fill them out.

What is the secret?

It starts within.

Home starts in the heart, for me it starts with taking stock of the things in my inner closets, and what has to go, I let go, and what can stay I keep, but I don’t just let it stay under the bed.

Dust bunnies… bleh.

Let your light so shine before men, for God gave you that glory, and there is no shame in using it, and letting it be seen.

There is also no shame in using it for your own peace and being present with it.

Making a daily practice of planting and cultivating peace within. Accepting the fact than things happen and learning to come to a place of acceptance and forgiveness with them.

To make our hearts, rooms, houses, mansions, apartments, and otherwise homely, we have to invite change. We have to give ourselves permission to let go, and to hold onto better things that help us grow and thrive.

Think about this. Before a house is built, there is not yet a house, and yet to build one, ground must be broken, a foundation has to be laid, and then there is the issue of stick built or modular, and when all the guts are put in… DECORATING?!?!?!?!

Who is where? What goes on here? Themes?

It’s a project that is changing and growing as the process goes on until, for the most part, things settle.

Now, usual life begins, the frenetic, yet hopefully organized process of making a house is more of a storm that has passed for the moment until….

BEBES.

Rinse and repeat, the whole crazy creative process starts all over again. Is this not life though? Isn’t this the fundamental process that we go through every day, and every year as we live on this planet?

Life was never meant to be static, and I also don’t think God intended it to be completely and utterly chaotic bordering the dysfunctional. I do feel that in all of this the Holy Spirit does abide in the process of life, and life itself. At least we can invite her to do so, to do her home setting and allow us to experience something beautiful, something homely.

Finding home isn’t an event alone, it’s a life long process. It’s also a process of creating a space of mind, heart, and presence that our souls can live in, be at rest with, and yes… even play.

“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will receive you to myself; that where I am, you may be there also.” John 14:3.

Peace and blessings.