The Center of a Welcoming Home

I drool over them as much as you do, probably. You know what I mean: those Instagrammable, perfectly staged homes that are so cute, you just want to pinch the pillows on the couch. The homeowners who have their design style perfected, and it's not "eclectic garage sale." The people whose throw blankets are perfectly draped, rather than wadded up on the ottoman. The people whose book collections were curated for size and cover color, and are not actually a to-be-read pile.

You know those people.

Maybe you are those people. (Sending much love to your posts, if you are. You make my days brighter with your pictures!)

I'm not those people.

I've made peace with it. Ryan and I live in a home that we hope reflects our everyday life. The pictures we hang on the wall are pictures of our favorite moments in life, people we love, or crafted by artists we know in real life. My seasonal décor came from one of two places: the generous offering of my mother-in-law when she cleaned out her own house, or the dollar store. Our throw blankets are vintage (in throw-blanket years) and do not reflect any sort of current trend.

And you won't even have to look very hard to find a stray feather from a cat toy accenting some corner of the carpet. Just a little gem she's left herself for later when she's bored.

We love our home and don't apologize for it. It's not farmhouse. It's not chic. (It could sometimes be classified as shabby.) It's not modern. It's Shaffer. It's just who we are. We won't ever garner design accolades, and we're okay with it. We'll appreciate our style and simultaneously appreciate the more labeled styles of Instagrammers.

But we had the nicest thing said about our home this week, and I've been chewing on it ever since I heard it.

As you might know, Ryan's mom lived here with us for a couple of weeks after she had surgery last fall. Our guest room filled up quickly with all her belongings. We brought in a folding table and a hospital table and a kids' table...and a dining room chair for her visitors to sit in while they talked to her. Our guest room is just a normal size, so all the superfluous tables quickly filled the room, and it looked a little less magazine-ish when filled with suitcases, nebulizers, and pill bottles.

The guest bath was filled with the shower chair, all her lotions and face potions, extra clothes and towels, and even Braeya had a hard time navigating her way to the sink for her drinks. (Yes, we give her a water bowl. No, she won't use it.)

So there we were, our little house bursting at the seams with our guest and all her belongings. It was hard to keep everything corralled and organized - and keep up on the laundry and the cooking and the visitor-welcoming.

But the other night, when we were spending some time with Ryan's mom, she told us she missed being at our house. She started listing some of her favorite things about staying with us. She liked my cooking (one of her favorite things about me right now, I guess, since she mentions it every time she sees me), she liked our conversations, she loved her room...and a handful of other things.

Then she looked right at us and said, "But do you know what I loved most of all about your house?"

I shook my head and waited for the grand unveiling. What had we done so well in our home-making that she saved it for last because it was best of all?

Jesus lives there.

I stared at her, and she continued. You can feel Him there. Everywhere. That's the best part of your house. Jesus lives there.

She had given us the best gift.

Our house will always border on "eclectic garage sale." Other than our beloved coffee-themed kitchen, our house will probably never really have a style or a theme. It will always be filled with the things we love the most - the things that bring us great comfort. We will always do our best to make anyone who enters, whether for coffee, dinner, or a place to stay overnight, feel as comfortable and loved as possible.

But above all, we hope everyone senses what she did. We hope they know Jesus lives here.

The first night we owned this house, we walked through it and wrote Scripture on the walls. We painted over those verses, hiding His Word there for all time. We've prayed our way through this house time and time again. We welcome Him here every day. We always hope people sense that. It matters to us.

You can't Instagram it, but you can't improve upon it either. It's the best feature. The center. The highlight.

She sensed it, and nothing else mattered to me. Not the eclectic style. Not the piles of things during her visit.

Jesus lives here. She knew it. And that was the best word-gift she could have offered.


* Note: the picture above hangs in our foyer and was actually our wedding gift from Ryan's mom and step-dad. I feel like that's kind of a full circle moment, don't you? The best gift...twice.