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Home is not a place, but a space. I have not lived in one place since before going to college, up until when home was in Michigan. My whole life, until college, home was a place. Not quite so much anymore. In the last five and  half years, if I’m counting correctly, I have moved a total of 13 times. I have bounced from dorm to Argentine home-stay to rich person’s house to dorm again to townhouse cottage to house to house to house to car to another rich person’s house to, finally, the apartment in which I sit and write this morning. There were a few more in between, too, that I didn’t list (namely, the handful of times I ‘moved’ back in with my family some summers). 

In my apartment this morning, there is a table and chairs for me to sit at right next to our kitchen window, and that is all I need today. The rest of the place is a clutter of boxes yet to be unpacked, donation piles, miscellaneous dishware, sweatshirts, trash bags, oven mits, coffee mugs, and avocados. Still, I can sit in this unfinished, messy chaos and feel at home. I can see in my mind what this will be soon, and it fills me with the peace and joy that truly being at home can do. It’s not about the apartment itself or the stuff we will fill it with, but about the life that will be lived out of it, made more manageable by how we fill the place. Filling the place molds the space; I’m not superstitious, but almost like an aura, an energy. The place is a tangible vessel for the intangible space that we occupy within it. And I don’t mean just filling the place with things; I mean filling it with ourselves. 

My roommate and I are best friends; most people mistake us for sisters. I’m sure we will have our minor issues at some point, but we know that the foundation of our relationship is unshakeable and that is where home comes from. Our shared pursuit of excellence, love of the Lord, motivation to push ourselves every day, to love one another and the people around us, to be filled with light and pour it out, the same way it stream into the kitchen window. Having a home is what living a productive, purposeful, fulfilling life rests on. At its core, my home is where the Holy Spirit is. Luckily, He is everywhere present, so my home can be anywhere and everywhere all the time. Yet, because I am human, I tend to rely on the physical to grasp that. That’s why I am located, physically, in this place, this apartment, and can know that it will be home because Becca and I are devoted to filling it with the Holy Spirit in the way that we live. We will leave bitterness at the door with our shoes, and the sun will not go down on our anger as we climb into our beds at night. We will make it beautiful, with plants and light colors and tapestries, beauty that reflects creation and connects us to our maker. We will work and move and create and laugh and love and even cry in this place, and every single piece of it will contribute to this home.