What Moves You?

By the time I was a senior graduating from high school, we lived in about 15 different houses.
Each move, my mom would pack and unpack and make us feel like we were finally home.

She'd bake cookies and make costumes and plant gardens and do all the wonderful 'mom' things that make a house feel like a home.

But when you're renting, there is always a little bit of uncertainty and unsettledness.

Maybe the owners will decide to sell, move back in, or maybe rent it to their cousin's family.

If I were techy, I'd post the video clip from Meet the Parents where Ben Stiller goes over to the ex-fiance's tricked out house and standing in his gorgeous kitchen Owen Wilson asks, "Are you a homeowner Greg?"
And Greg stutters, "I-I-I rent..."
I'd put a caption on it that says, "Don't let this happen to you!"

But it's happened to me.
And many of us.
I am a realtor who rents.

It's ironic that as much as I am not really a person who is all about social status and having stuff, when people ask where I live, I feel like I have to go into a dissertation of how I ended up in an apartment.
And then I get the holy spirit, "Gotcha." :)
There's that pride again.

I have to remember that my identity is in not in the fact that I have a #11303 behind my address, my identity is in Christ.

And there are sometimes very good reasons of course that people rent.
I just always wanted to own my own home and recently moved from one that I loved.
Currently I am in "all things will work for good for those who love God" mode.

Always, always, I've loved homes and yearned for a place to call my own.

I spent my earliest years playing with my yellow roofed Fisher Price house and I actually played Barbies until I was in high school.

I even hand made rolls of paper that I bound together with the rubber bands from my braces so that I could have a realistic looking newspaper sitting at the front door of my Barbie Dream House.

While other girls dreamed their way through bridal magazines, I scoured the pages of Better Homes and Gardens.

I imagined mine a craftsman style bungalow type.
Super homey.


A place where lunches and backpacks sat on the bench near the back door and the welcoming smell of fresh baked cookies wafted through the air when the kids got home from school.

A place where little hands made crafts and rolled play dough on the counters while I prepared and sometimes burned dinner.

I wanted a front porch where we could all sit together and watch the sun rise or set, and a swing in back overlooking the pool where I would one day sit with my grandchildren and read books like "Goodnight Moon," and "The Giving Tree."

My home didn't always have Better Homes moments, but there were some days there that seemed like the very best.

Home is where you go when the rest of the world just gets to be too much and you just want to be...
At peace...with the people who really love you, faults and all.

There is nothing so wonderful as a crackling fire, a good read and a super snuggly dog on your lap.
Nothing as fabulous as having a gazillion screaming girls gathered around the dining table ready to blow out candles....again.
The same girls you have been watching grow up since they were in kindergarten.

And the smiling face of a newborn baby granddaughter, even in an apartment.
These are the things that move me.

Making a move is not always easy.
Packing and unpacking boxes, or baggage, is hardly ever fun.

But we just have to keep moving forward.
Eventually, we will be home.

What moves you?
Maybe I can help.
RE/MAX