It has hard wood floors and carpet you just want to dig your
toes into.
Large windows that look out over rolling hills of green with
a swing set in the back yard and two or three kiddos climbing over and around
the slides and fort.
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| Photo credit |
It has a big kitchen and living room with plenty of shelves
for all the books we’ll read as a family after dinner and between school work.
It has a wraparound porch and flowers growing along the path, tumbling out of
old half whiskey barrels and rusted out wheelbarrows.
Yes, I’ve had plenty of time to dream about my perfect home.
Dream about what my children will look like and how my husband I will sit in
the summer evenings on the porch swing, holding hands and talking about our day
or just being together, listening to the birds sing and the crickets in the
too-tall grass.
It’s like that perfect all-American dream that can’t seem to
be dim or extinguish in my heart. I think about that day and smile. My
coworkers and I sigh over chocolate in the break room and part of me seems to
be counting down the days to a day I don’t know when.
It’s a worthy dream. One that is fun to pin house decorating
ideas on Pinterest and sigh over the pictures of cute families with
two-and-a-half kids and a dog. But as is my point in my drive in the direction
of my “one word” of 2014, comes the question: what am I doing with this dream
beyond the love-sick sighs and hundreds of pins?
One of the most powerful passages in scripture is Proverbs
31. My dad often reads this passage on Mother’s Day and I find myself comparing
who I am to the woman in this chapter. Will my husband and children rise up and
call me blessed? Do I laugh at the days to come? Am I learning to bring my
future husband joy and not strife all the days of our lives?
Marriage and learning how to raise a family and be a godly
wife is not something one starts learning the minute the preacher pronounces us
man and wife. They start now. In surrounding myself with godly examples, like
my own mom and several dear friends I have come to know and love. In dreaming towards
having this lovely home on a hill and the family that fills it, I also need to
be realistic. Knowing there will be days of frustration and heartache. The
grass won’t always be green and times when I want to smack my husband instead
of hold his hand. ;-)
But isn’t that part of the dream and the process of learning
to dream dreams based in God’s plans? God dreams this dream and desire of my
heart with me. He put it there, planted and watered those seeds. So it’s time
to pull the weeds and till the garden, praying for rain and trusting for a
harvest beyond my WILDEST dreams.
