Home is where the heart is… And where you hang your pictures
I love walking into a person’s house, or even an office, and the first thing they say is, “make yourself at home.” I then sit and try and become comfortable in a somewhat foreign environment. I begin to look around and see how the host has truly made the surrounding area in which I sit their home.
Whether a house, an office, or even just a desk, we like to “make ourselves at home.” We aren’t completely at ease, completely settled, or satisfied until we put just a bit of our personal touch to the area. And how do most people do to do this? They display pictures.
Walk into an office and try not to notice the images displayed on walls, shelves, and the desk itself. Enter your best friend’s sitting room and try to ignore the gallery of family photos hanging over the couch. You can’t! We find ourselves taken in to another person’s life. We become aware that, “this is their space.” And all it took was a picture. Stories were being displayed of
The last quarter of 2016 held a lot of exciting changes in my life. In early October I moved to a new state, and started a new job. In November my husband and I were joined in marriage, we began a new life together. Between the move and marriage there wasn’t a lot of time to become truly settled. My heart, although excited to be with my husband, was not at yet home. Our home felt more like a hotel, a temporary dwelling, a place we would not be for long… and something had to be done about this.
And so, I started hanging picture frames. My husband and I chose just the right ones, the ones that would emphasize the photos that would soon fill them. I stepped back, and even before they had a picture to display, the frames had created a whole new room, inviting us to make it our own.
When a work trip that took me away from home for a short time, my husband filled those frames as a surprise to me. When I walked into our home, my heart was settled… this was OUR HOME! It belonged to us, and no one else. Those were our memories being displayed.
And so I decided, home is indeed, “where the heart is,” but it’s also where you hang your pictures.
