My Heart's at Home , livre ebook

Harvest House Publishers, Inc. - Savage Jill

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115 pages

English

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Founder and Executive Director of Hearts at Home Jill Savage explores the important role "home" plays in a family's journey. With her personable, humorous style, Jill shares from her experience as a mother of five and from conversations with many other moms to offer practical ideas and motivation to create a home that is asafe place for a functional family to blossomcommunity center that offers hospitality and compassionchurch where prayer and Scripture guide all membersmuseum filled with a family's history, stories, and heritageschool with lessons of virtue, integrity, and ethicsThis anchor book for Hearts at Home will extend beyond this valuable ministry to encourage all women to build the heart of their home on biblical principles and to raise a family that is strong, loving, and firmly standing on a foundation of faith.

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Publié par	Harvest House Publishers, Inc.
Date de parution	15 février 2007
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780736934992
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0646€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Verses marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Cover by Garborg Design Works
Cover photo Time and Again, Reed Family Photography, East Peoria, IL October, 2006
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Ste 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920
Harvest House Publishers has made every effort to trace the ownership of all quotes. In the event of a question arising from the use of a quote, we regret any error made and will be pleased to make the necessary correction in future editions of this book.
MY HEART S AT HOME
Copyright 2007 by Jill Savage
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Savage, Jill, 1964-
My heart s at home / Jill Savage.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7369-1826-8 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-7369-1826-4 (pbk.)
1. Home-Religious aspects-Christianity. I. Title.
BR115.H56S28 2007
248.4-dc22
2006021483
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
~ Contents ~

What Is a Home?
P ART I
The Foundation
1. Home as a Safe House
2. Home as a Rest Area
3. Home as a Trauma Unit
4. Home as a Church
P ART II
The Framework
5. Home as a Pep Rally
6. Home as a Research Lab
7. Home as a School
8. Home as a Museum
P ART III
The Details
9. Home as a Playground
10. Home as a Business Office
11. Home as a Hospitality House
12. Home as a Cultural Center
P ART IV
The Personnel
13. Mom, Site Manager
14. Dad, General Contractor
15. Mom and Dad, Managing Partners
16. Kids, Builders Under Construction
Discussion Guide
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About Hearts at Home
What Is a Home?
What do you think of when you hear the word home? What images and emotions come to mind? This is something to ponder, for these images and emotions have the power to shape your life, to give it meaning, to tell you who you are.
THOMAS KINKADE

M y husband, Mark, and I walked through the well-lived-in farmhouse marveling at the size of the rooms. There was a lot of space: large kitchen and dining room, good-sized family room and living room, one bedroom for an office, a small bathroom-and that was just on the main floor.
Upstairs were five bedrooms! Yep, five bedrooms...and no bathroom. One small bathroom on the main floor for our family of six? Well, of course this house needed some work. What farmhouse wouldn t? And what would it take to add a bathroom upstairs? No problem. But that wasn t all. It was not only a perfect house, but it was in a perfect location: smack-dab in the middle of cornfields and yet only two and a half miles from Wal-Mart. What more could we want? Our dream to live in the country was going to finally come true.
We made several trips to look at this house with our Realtor. On the final trip, we were determining what we were going to offer the seller when another Realtor and interested party stopped by. They asked if we minded if they took a quick tour of the home, even though we were present. We told them to go right ahead. As the Realtor s client stepped through the entryway into the kitchen, he said, This place is a pit. I don t want to see any more. They walked out of the house and then Mark and I looked at each other and laughed. We didn t see the liabilities of this old farmhouse-we saw its possibilities!
We signed the papers and, with the help of friends and family, set to work, determining to do most of the renovation before we moved in. Our four children ranged from ages twelve to nine months. We decided the best strategy was for Mark to work evenings and weekends at the house and I would get a sitter occasionally so I could help him, but ultimately I prepared myself for full kid duty twenty-four hours a day for however long this took.
It took four months.
We tore out all of the carpet because the entire house needed new floor coverings. We uncovered pocket doors that had been closed off years ago. We painted woodwork that was already painted and cleaned and stained woodwork that was still in its natural state. We washed and painted every wall and ceiling. We tore out the plumbing for the only bathroom because the floor had rotted and we feared someone might just sit on the pot one day and fall through to the cellar.
But that wasn t all. We still had the no bathroom on the second floor problem, so we made a decision to tear off the entryway and a small enclosed porch, pour a new foundation, and add a two-story addition: a small room and an entryway on the main floor and a laundry room and a bathroom on the second floor. We also decided that because there was no garage, we would add an attached garage off the back of the house.
We didn t hire anyone to do the construction work-we did it all ourselves with the exception of hiring an electrician and contracting someone to pour the foundation.
It was a lot of work.
I often think back to that time in our life nearly ten years ago. We had a dream and we had the vision to see the dream come true. When we looked at the house, we didn t see it for what it was. We saw it for what it would become.
There was another construction project we were managing even while constructing and reconstructing our new home: We were building a family. We had a dream and the vision to see that dream come true as well.
Many of the home-building experiences we ve had with our farmhouse have mirrored the experiences we ve had building our family. Sometimes we ve had to tear down an old structure that we carried with us from our families of origin and build something new and different. Sometimes we ve had to start from scratch and build a completely new structure within our family because we have a vision for something different than either of us have ever known. In both cases we ve had a plan, and we ve carried out that plan with intentionality.
When we renovated, we drew up blueprints to help us visualize the new part of our home. Seeing the details on paper kept us on track and working toward the same goals. In the same way, we ve needed a blueprint for our family. Similar to the steps in building a home, there are foundational elements we need to have in place so we can build a strong family structure. Once the foundation is poured, we begin to build the framework, and eventually we put on the finishing details.
But what makes a house a home? It s the family dynamics of the people who live in that house that makes it a home. When we value being home and recognize all the roles that home plays in our life, we can provide a secure, loving environment for each member of our family.
Home-there s a warmth about that word. It s associated with love and security. It s a place where we are known, accepted, and celebrated. But a house isn t what we are really drawn to-it s the memories, the feelings we experience that draw us home. And a house can t provide memories itself-it s the people, the family that draws our heart to home.
Our neighborhoods are filled with broken hearts and broken homes. Many of us came from broken homes and broken families, longing for something different for our own family but not quite knowing how to get there. We know home is important because we can identify the qualities that we experienced or longed for as a child. Now that we have our own families, we need a blueprint to help us build and/or renovate our home and family.
My Heart s at Home is designed to help us understand all the roles that home plays in our life:
Home as...a safe house
...a rest area
...a trauma unit
...a church
Home as...a pep rally
...a research lab
...a school
...a museum
Home as...a playground
...a business office
...a hospitality house
...a cultural center
Home is central to understanding who we are, who we belong to, and what we stand for. It is hope, promise, and love. Home isn t about the structure we live in; it s about our connection to the people who live in the structure with us.
In this book you ll learn a lot about the people who live in my home, so I believe introductions are in order. My husband, Mark, and I have been married 23 years, 13 of them happily. We re a living example that two people can restore love to what eventually became a loveless marriage. Most of that story is found in my book Is There Really Sex After Kids? (Zondervan), but you ll hear snippets of it in this book as well. Our oldest daughter, Anne, is 22 years old. She s been married less than a year to Matt, the son-in-law we prayed for all of Anne s life. Our oldest son, Evan, is 19 and a sophomore in college. He s studying music business and hopes to someday make a living with his musical talents. Erica is 16 years old and a sophomore in high school. She loves musical theater and fashion design. Kolya is the newest member to our family. He s 13 years old, but has only been a Savage for three and a half years. We adopted Kolya from Russia at the age of nine. However, you d hardly know that now, as his transition into our family has been very smooth. Austin is our youngest. He s ten years old and in the fifth grade. Both Kolya and Austin love sports, and they are both learning to play an instrument in the school band (earplugs, anyone?).
I ve been at home now for 20 years, and I consider motherhood my profession. I have a college degree (music education), and initially felt I was wasting my education, talents, and skills by being just a mom. In time, however, my