The Making of Bekahland

When I bought the house...I prayed fervently that this would be a place where God moved. I didn't look at it as an investment, but rather a ministry base. I wanted to make it home - an inviting place where people wanted to visit. I wanted it to have its own unique flavor and flair that people recognized as mine.

Maybe you'll get this...and it sounds a bit silly...but it's true. As excited as I was to have this house and to make it mine and to carry on the legacy...it was bittersweet to do all that on my own. I'd always dreamed of making it home for someone, and it was hard, sometimes, to be enthused about doing this on my own. But many years before, I'd read Debby Jones and Jackie Kendall's book Lady in Waiting and remembered the admonition to not put my life on hold until I had someone to hold, so I set about making a home.

I painted rooms {because I could...without asking permission} and had some successes and failures in paint choice. I planted flowers {we won't talk about the time I failed to mix up the tulip bulbs and planted one row of yellow on one side of the porch and one row of red on the other side of the porch}. I invited our student workers over to watch TV shows at night...I opened the guest room to friends passing through if they wanted to spend the night...and I held a ladies' Bible study here for several years, too.

I had scrapbooking marathons with friends, sleepovers with my friends' kids {no one really slept when they were supposed to} and hosted Christmas dinner.

I wrote and cooked and decorated and prayed and read and tried to live a good, full life in this place entrusted to me.

My skills in home improvement were...ahem...sad. I hired out a few improvements and did what minimal {read: pitiful} landscaping attempts I could muster. It became home. It became all I hoped it would. It became something I believe Grandma and Grandpa would have been pleased to visit.

And then I started dating Isaac. The first time we met in person was not in this house. It was not even in this town. It was miles away, and when I drove home and walked in the front door, late at night, I stared around at the familiar walls...with all the memories...and in an instant...it wasn't home anymore.

I called one of my friends and said to her, "I can't believe it. He's never even been here...and yet this is suddenly not home anymore." He'd already told me of his hope to marry me, and with those words...for the first time, home became a person...not a place.

Weeks went by, and this house became a place I couldn't be...and that had never happened to me before. I drove. I walked. I sat on the back porch. Anything...but inside the walls that felt empty and crushing.

And then the phone call. The one in which he told me it was really, really over. The one in which he told me he was moving on with his life and I needed to do the same.

Ironically the call came at the start of a weekend when this house was a hub of visitors...in town for our 10 year college reunion. I was hosting...and cooking...and welcoming...and realizing I had to find a way to make this a home again. Isaac had walked away and I might never find love again. If I couldn't have love, I had to have home.

And even as I sought to make that happen, I hoped, way down in the deep places of my heart, that the feeling of a person-filled-home really would happen for me someday.