How do you describe home? During the holiday season, home means many things. As I wrote Fledge: Launching Your Kids Without Losing Your Mind, I asked friends what their idea of “home” is for a chapter on home. These were the responses:
- Home is love and laughter, noise, heartache, tears, and family.
- Home is freedom.
- Home is my safe base, my nest.
- Home is where I retreat to after doing battle all day.
- Home is where you can live, where memories are made.
- Home is where I am unconditionally loved.
- Home means having a safe place to land.
- Home is my sanctuary.
- Home is people, safety, relief.
- Home is where I’m comfortable, the place I feel free to relax, unwind, and be with those I love.
- Home is where my life seems at peace and at rest, where my heart yearns to be, and where my family thrives.
- Home is where I can be myself without fear of being judged or
misunderstood. - Home is where I’m loved unconditionally.
- Home is where your loved ones are.
- Home is where you can just be..to relax, reconnect, and recharge.
- Home is your soft place to fall.
- Home is where ever we can all be together.
- Home is shelter, customized to provide spiritual and emotional comfort. It’s as unique as the persons inhabiting it.
- There is truly no place like home.
- Home is where we give thanks, recharge, and help each other handle what the fallen world has dealt us.
- Home has never been a house. Home is where I know and feel I belong.
- Home is where I can be my whole self.
- Home is anywhere I hear my mother’s voice.
- Home is a place many long for. Our home will be with Christ in eternity. Only then will that longing be filled.
As my kids are making their homes in other places, home and the holidays are becoming more intrinsic. Similar to the descriptions of home, home is a feeling more than anything.
That feeling is beautifully described in Susie Finkbeiner’s new book, A Song of Home, a Christian novel, the third in a series which takes place during the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. One thing I love about the story is that it encompasses the feelings of home, but not in the Hallmark Christmas movie way. Through the story, you experience the pure and honest perception of what home is to a child who faces hardship, disappointment, and love. 
I’m excited to offer a giveaway of A Song of Home to one of you. Just comment below what home means to you and your name will be entered. It’s that simple. You can expect other giveaways of great books in the coming months. It’s my privilege to share great, encouraging work from fellow authors. So watch your email in the next couple of months. (If you haven’t subscribed to the blog, do so here!)
What Home Means to Me
First, I’ll share about home. Home is where the people I love the most are. It’s where I can be myself, and where there’s unconditional love. It’s where I don’t have to strive or perform. It’s where I can be all of myself, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and not be judged. It’s also a place what feels safe because of the atmosphere. Home is somewhere that’s not so perfect, and yet simply beautiful and welcoming.
I’d love to hear about your meaning of home. Comment below and you’ll be entered to win A Song of Home. Entries will end December 21.
A few exciting announcements!
- Join me on my author Facebook page for all upcoming announcements and events on the March 13 release of Fledge: Launching Your Kids Without Losing Your Mind, including a women’s event: The Faith Gathering on March 17 in Shipshewana, IN, from 6-9 pm. Online tickets are now on sale. (I won’t spam your email with hordes of announcements, so join us on social media where you’ll find all the details!)
- Fledge has been endorsed by Jim Daly, President of Focus on the Family. I’m honored! Preorders are now available.
- New parent coaching resources will be available in 2018. Stay tuned for those announcements.
- As mentioned earlier, watch your emails for upcoming giveaways from great authors with great books.
- My friend Kate Matoung has a new book about home releasing in April!
- Enter below for A Song of Home!
So many of the descriptions that you included seem to me to be statements of what we wish home was, or what we think is the ideal home. Statements like: ” where I can be myself, without fear of being judged,” ” where I am loved unconditionally,” “where I am safe,” all sound wonderful. However, I don’t know how many people actually have that. Perhaps that is why so many long for heaven – a place we think will be like that. Given the descriptions, perhaps a better statement would be: we find home when we listen to and trust God. He made us, and wants us to be ourselves (who he made us to be.) He doesn’t judge, (but may correct.) He loves us unconditionally. Following his directions for our lives, we are completely safe – physically and emotionally. It has taken me a long time to stop looking for home in a place or in a human relationship. As I release those idealistic expectations, it allows me to enjoy the charms of many places and people.
Thanks, Arloa. You are honest about what we long home to be, and the rarity of many people finding this in a place or person. I agree that God puts a longing in our hearts for these things which are truly found in Him. Your honesty of how releasing those expectations allows you to truly enjoy people and places is an echo of “A Song of Home,” a story that reveals the brokenness of these ideals of home. Thank you so much for sharing!
Home is the place I most want to be and the place I can’t wait to return to Whenever I have been away. It’s the place I am greeted by wagging tails and loving arms. Its where I hole up when I am not feeling well. It’s familiar, safe, and comfortable. It’s the place I can pull away from the world and connect with myself and my God. And it’s the place where I am aware of a longing for my true Home where I will spend eternity with the One Who knows me best and loves me most.
I love this Sandy! Especially the wagging tails and loving arms! Wagging tails are the best!
Home is any point in time and place I connect with God. I grew up in a stable home but one in which I felt unconditional acceptance by one parent and conditional performance-based love and acceptance from the other parent. I raised my children as a single mom and feel very disconnected from all of them at this stage of my life (they are young adults) due to their choices. But through it all, my own childhood, raising my children and now as an empty nester, the presence of God and my relationship with Him has been the core of my survival and the reason I survive and thrive day to day. Looking forward to Heaven, for sure!
Tiffany, this resonates with me with a lot of themes discussed in my upcoming book “Fledge.” It’s a tough time, this time of life. The conditional-performance based love–that is hurtful. It does something to a child. I’m thankful you’ve found that God is your safe place. He truly is. Blessings to you as you walk this new season of life.
Home… where peace is found and sometimes lost, where prayers are lifted, where heartache and worries are exposed, laid bare, open and raw, where healing begins, where hope is found, where dreams are fostered, where life takes us to places we sometimes wish we could avoid, but also to places and experiences we could never have imagined. Where people love you inspite of your earthly, human self and inspire you to become more like our Saviour.
Home is a complicated, holy place that resides in the people we love.
Jennifer, I do think you need to write! This description is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful with so much truth. This was a gift to me to read this. Thank you!
H – Honest
O – Open
M – Magical
E – Everything
Beautiful Renee!
What a great way to remember the true meaning of home. Love this!
We moved a lot when I was growing up so home didn’t equal house. But my parents made a safe place of love laughter and shared meals where we sat and talked long after we were done eating. Home to me feels safe, physically AND emotionally.
You’ve captured the essence of the “inside” of home and the people who are home. I love the perspective of both physical and emotional safety. Thanks Jesse! I’m sure your home right now is FULL of laughter!
Jessie, I can say with complete earnestness that YOU have always been a home for me. Love you, my friend.
Home to me is the heartbeat of family. It’s where you can be real. Where memories are made. Where lessons are learned. It’s crazy, it’s loud, it’s happy, it angry, its work, it’s lazy. There’s joy, there’s peace (at night), there’s celebrations, there’s slamming doors. There’s complimenting and there’s yelling. Home is a beautiful place to be no matter what’s going on!
Velda, I love this. “There’s complimenting and there’s yelling.” Isn’t that the truth! This is really what home is. Thank yo for your honesty, and thank you for entering!
Ah, yes, Velda! Home has many sides to it. But there’s beauty in the complexity!