Home is where the heart is

Our house currently contains 8 people, two cats, 1 fish, 1 lizard, a hedgehog, and lots of memories. It has a new front door and storm door now. There's three floors, a deck, a play set, some grass, a garden, a small driveway, and it's on a road that my navy pilot friend says pulling out on is more dangerous and stressful than landing on an air craft carrier at night. This is the heart Shullydom on earth, complete with a Middle Earth map on our entry wall. It’s our place, our home. The children have never known another. 

In reality, we’ve gotten to travel so much we refer to home as where we are together. This great unit in Moab was our home for 5 days last summer. It was a nice home. A campsite on Isle au Haut was our home for two nights in 2017. It was home because we were together, together suffering through buzzing insects long into the night. I think our  travels have taught us all to enjoy the sweetness of the moment or to get through hard and uncomfortable times. 

This house contains a lot more than you’d think at first glance in its such-and-such square footage.  We’ve been known to have extra people stay with us. Sometimes for a little bit like an overnight or a little bit more like months. I can make it sound like a 

mansion; it has many rooms. There’s no garage, but we have a shed, lovingly called “the barn”. Once when friends (1 adult, 3 kids) were staying with us a mutual friend who had not been to our house stopped by. He walked along the side of our house and left wondering how in the world we fit everyone in. Think Mary Poppins or Heromine’s bag. Think abundant grace and peace out of God’s kindness poured over people and spaces. It wasn’t amazingly ideal, a lot of sharing was involved, but it worked.

In this time of social distancing and self-isolating, I see memes of where to take the next vacation and it’s a map of rooms in the house. Popular rooms here are the living room, dining room, and kitchen. The living room has a special thing where it has three sections: on the couch, not on the couch but looking at the screen, and in front of the back door. It’s not a lot of space, but it’s delineated in everyone’s mind. The “new room” (formerly the garage) has a door that can be shut. Everyone can attempt slip away upstairs unnoticed to their room or shared room as the case may be and have some peace.

As we all learn social media manners, I took a video chat last week in my desk space which is really just a corner of the master bedroom. The person I was meeting with talked about his office. Then he asked where I was…“Upstairs,” I told him. Didn’t want to push it too far by saying, “my corner office.” He didn’t need to know it was the bedroom. There was a desk, bulletin board, and bookcase on screen. Good enough.

On March 13, Maryland’s governor began to put into place the first step of self-isolating. It would be the last day in school, meaning all 8 of us would be home together indefinitely. We went out Saturday, the 14th. We anticipated vacation essentially, even calling it that initially—all of us home together except no travel. Up through the 23rd we saw friends. As of 3/30 we haven’t interacted with people although we go outside. On 3/27 I went to my infusion. On 3/31 Chris ventured to Costco. We have not shuttered our windows or battened down the hatches for the last time just yet.

We are making it. There’s a lot of screens, but there’s also games and books and talking and cleaning and silliness and baking and cooking and chores and music and headphones and ear buds and phone calls and video chats. There’s prayer and Scripture. God is here with us. His very Spirit fills our home. There’s relief and rest in the familiar. They say home is where the heart is. Our heart are here and we are together.