Creating an environment of beauty in the home can be a daunting task, especially if you have “messes’ in your family. The idea of beauty can be so illusive that we may tend to throw up our hands and say forget it. How do we realistically bring beauty in to our homes without stressing everyone out in the process? I did not grow up like this but I had friends that could not even sit on their bed once it was made because it would not be “beautiful’ if they did. I also had friends that would not even invite anyone to their home because they were so disappointed in how messy and uninviting it was. I also know that I have gone to immaculate houses and felt both welcomed and warm and at others cold and uninviting. Once when our family was looking to purchase a house, we looked at a house where the family had left all their beautiful antique furnishings in it for better showing. One of our daughters cried when we told her that we were going to buy the house. It was a beautiful, large 1930’s Georgian house in a small town with a wonderfully large backyard and the perfect tree for a tree house. When we asked her why she was crying she said that she could not live in that house because she would be afraid she would break something. We all laughed and realized the she thought that the furniture and décor would stay the same. That formal though beautiful house felt more like a museum than a home to live and play and grow-up in. Yet she had been in “fancy” houses before and felt right at home. What was the difference? There was no one actually living in the house. The owners had already moved to another town. So is it just the décor that makes a house feel warm and inviting? I think it is a combination of things. One certainly is the way in which a house is decorated but another seems to be something more elusive. The Bible taught the Israelites to decorate their homes with scripture. Does that make the difference? I doubt it. I think that our houses take on the personality of its owners. Our attitude toward our house is reflected in how we decorate it, true, but it is also reflected in how we see our house. If we see it as a place given to us by God to live and love each other in and a place to “entertain strangers’ in, then those entering will feel welcome and invited.
When our children were young (1,3,5,7,and 9) Fred and I were starting a church. As you can imagine living on one income as a church starter meant that we did not have money for ‘extras’ like beautiful decorations. But God had given us hand-me-down furniture etc that we were so grateful for. Was our house beautiful and inviting? One night a few people came over to our house for a prayer time. I had straightened up the house some, lit a few fragrant candles, set the lighting to a pleasing level, and had praise music playing softly in the back ground. I was not feeling stressed or anxious in my spirit about what people would think about our house but was eager to have them come and join in prayer. Just before we began to pray, one of the men asked if he could share something. He said that from the moment that he walked in the house he felt peaceful and welcomed. He wanted to thank me for such a beautiful place to have our prayer time. I remember this event because God had been working in my heart about my attitude toward what He had provided and how a viewed what He had provided. I was rereading The Hidden Art of Homemaking and trying to think creatively about our house and not ‘magazine beautiful house”. God used a man who had a beautiful “magazine’ house to encourage me to see beauty the way God sees it.
