Home, Sweet Home
No home is complete without a needle point of this phrase, Home Sweet Home, hanging on the wall. I remember Mom hanging this phrase on the wall with a satisfied sigh. Always there is a search for home. Visitors to our house, when I was a child, always heard the phrase, “Make yourself at home!” This phrase was always spoken just after, our visitors heard, “Come on in….” This welcome, only three words long, always seemed like more than three syllables long. Perhaps it was the smile, the hug, and the warmth with which it was spoken.
Grandmother Suderman, Anna Loewen Suderman, wrote in her journal how she made her first dwelling a home. I am so glad she did. For her ‘nesting’ brought such beautiful memories and lessons for making a new home for her young bride and groom and for the family that followed. Her dreams, her longings and desires come through her journal writing. Did she write for publication or for a great literary tome? No, those were not her aspirations. Her focus was more family/home oriented.
When her youngest daughter recently wondered about remembering the old days as being good, she wondered how good they really were. Does time blur the memory of hardship and the struggle just to live? Why is it that we are drawn to ‘the way things were’?
What makes a home? What does it look like? What does being home smell like, sound like, taste like? Did my two Grandmothers know? Did they read books or magazine articles that told them how to make a home a home? No. Did they have television shows that showed them how to decorate, what furniture to purchase or what delectable foods to prepare? Grandmother (Grosmom)Emilie Brunn Siemens did not write a journal, yet, I know hunger was never far from the door for her five children in western Oklahoma in the 1900’s. When I see the picture of my grandfather and his five brothers – each wearing suits and starched collars – in that era, I wonder at all the was it entailed to prepare for the picture.
Grandmother Siemens cared for her children and then for her husband, Jacob V Siemens, who became paralyzed. Grandmother Suderman lost three young boys and one young girl, beloved children all in her young life. How did these Grandmothers survive the hard times? They knew their final Home in Heaven. Home was not a stop-over before the next destination here on earth..
Grandmother Suderman left a new beautiful five bedroom family home for a small old rented home on a rented farm. March 8, 1900 was their wedding day…there was no honeymoon in a far-off exotic land or even a hotel. They spent their first night in the home of the bride’s parents. In Grandmother Suderman’s journal she wrote, “We knelt at our bedside for prayers that first night and have done this throughout our years together.”
The next morning, after cleaning the mud that was left after the wedding guests departed the night before, Grandmother (Anna) and Grandfather (Gerhard) gathered wedding gifts, some food from canned and smoked Loewen larder, some chickens and placed them in the wagon. Anna’s father tied a milk cow to the back of the wagon.
They were young and love covers all. What were Anna’s thoughts as she viewed their old dirty small home. Did she mind making the home a place where field mice and dirt were not welcome. Anna scrubbed with brushes and homemade soap the three room house – walls, ceilings and the floors. Then Anna pressed the wrapping paper from the store and cut intricate designs, and hung the ‘curtains’ at the windows. She loved beauty and she loved Gerhard. She was making a home with what she was given. The dirt gave way to cleanliness and a feeling of home.
When the first tax assessor came, he wrote a list of their possessions…two horses, one cow, a wagon, a topbuggy and a sulky plow. When I considered what we owned when we were married, in 1952, it seemed unbelievable.
In 1952 when we married, we moved to a farm, with no running water, wood stove heat, a 3/4 bed, a table and 3 chairs. Our transportation was a beautiful blue two door coupe Desoto. We moved many times in our early married life. I made our new house a home, by baking a chocolate cake. I baked bread and made a beef vegetable stew and this made our new dwelling smell like home.
Yesterday our Anna found the scripture – Psalm 90:1-2. After reading this scripture, Home Sweet Home took on a new meaning. Three hours after Anna shared this scripture, she shared her new blog – Love is Home – God Is Home (drivingwithAnna.blogspot.com). The scripture began to grow in meaning. What is it about the word, Home? Especially at this season, when songs evoke memories of home. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” is one song that captures being home here on earth, and a reminder of what is to come when we finally arrive at home with our Lord! Home!
Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
So many things come together when we consider that God is our dwelling place, our home, before the beginning of time, before the mountains were created, before we were born – we have a home. When is ‘all well’? When we are at Home in our relationship with our God. Our home with God is not made with hands but with our attitudes and our relationship with God. Our hope-filled home is encapsulated in this verse – In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. John 14:2
A friend asked, “Why is it that even when all the family is around, I feel lonely.” It isn’t our earthly family that completes us and makes us feel at home – that contented feeling of completeness. It is when God is in our hearts and our earthly home, when we bow to Him and claim his Son as our Lord and Savior. Only then can we have peace.
“His master replied, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.” Matthew 24:21
Home. Sweet. Home. Come on in and make yourself at home!