Finding Home: How Does Your House Reflect You?

I know a person’s home reflects as much about her tastes as it does her place along her journey, but I was hard-pressed to imagine the whimsy that inspired this design. 

I felt as though we had kayaked into a nursery rhyme. “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn't know what to do. . .  Peter, Peter pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell . . . ”  

As we paddled deeper into the cove, I imagined poking the bulging side with a paddle and watching it explode, or unseating it from its foundation and seeing it float away, or maybe bounce along the bank and bob along the water.

There’s no end to the creative endeavors people put into their homes. A quick search of unusual homes offers the following sample:

For the extreme prepper, who still wants the amenities of luxury living, there is the Zombie- proof concrete house, (complete with indoor swimming pool)that folds up into an impenetrable box, the only entrance is over a drawbridge.

For the ocean lover—a seashell house.

For the hermit—a house on a rock.

And even a home for when you feel like “climbing a wall.”

Making home digs deep into the things we value. Whether playful or peaceful, bulging at the seams with friends and family, or silent and austere with meditation, our homes, in part, enable us to use the gifts we have been given.

I've discovered being an HGTV (House Hunters International, yes!) junkie (and yes, I did enter the Dream House contest) helps me to define the things that are important to me in a house at this stage of my journey. (I know, I know. Didn't we just finish renovating a house?) But my husband and I think we have one more in us.

And so, we pack up my father-in-law and scour the countryside for properties. At the end of the day we say: “Okay, we need to eliminate one. Which one will it be?”  Our little game helps us to stay on track, to keep refining and redefining what we've come to value—peace, serenity, and beauty.

Sometimes I feel guilty about enjoying these pleasures.  But when I have guests and they are able to sit by the pool, surrounded by bird-song filled trees, shed their tensions and soak in beauty, I know it is the gift I have been given.

So come on by. Once you make it past the initial canine chaos at the front door, I guarantee a relaxing afternoon. And maybe, if that HGTV van comes along with my winnings—we’ll move on over lakeside!

How about you? What do you like in a house?  How does your home reflect the place you are in life? Do you think the different places you've lived have been representative of your journey and gifts?

And don’t you wonder just what that final place is going to look like?—the one whose architect and builder is God!