Is Your Home a Castle or an Embassy?

I was challenged recently when a friend mentioned struggling to remember that her home should be an embassy for Jesus and not a castle unto herself. That statement hit me right between the eyes! Her experience had to do with a stranger, but my thoughts immediately went to family.

In a blended family, maybe more than any other, your home often feels like it belongs to someone else. You may be incorporating furniture from your previous house and their previous house and it is doubtful the styles blend any better than your new family seems to.

There may be a lack of respect for something that you hold dear – your children may know its value to you, but your stepchildren or maybe even your husband may not understand that.

It is so important that we take a step back and get a glimpse of life from our children and stepchildren’s perspective here. These children, whether by death or divorce, have suffered a great loss. You made a decision that affected their lives. You brought others into their inner circle. They are broken just as you are, however statistics say that it takes a child one year longer to begin to process and move forward than it takes adults.

Regardless of their age, they are struggling through all the scary changes in their lives and are quite a ways behind us on the path to healing.

This may not be your specific situation, but I hope there is still some value in hearing it:

Imagine your eight year old daughter Sally has spent the weekend with her dad. She slept on the couch in his one bedroom apartment and the noises of the ice maker and the creaking of the ceiling overhead caused her to have two frightening and restless nights. Dad doesn’t cook so they ate out all weekend and the food isn’t sitting well. He drilled her for information about her new stepdad and stepbrothers and threw in a few unkind things about her mother. They had a good time together, but she never felt at home and dad’s words about mom upset and confused her.

Finally, Sally is dropped off at home and as she walks through the door, mom is angry with dad because she is an hour late and the evening plans were foiled. Sally gets a quick hug, but it isn’t very warm. She throws her dirty clothes on the floor of her room and before she can even walk back into the hallway mom is fussing at her to put her clothes in the laundry basket. Her younger stepbrother is crying because he hit his elbow on the corner of the table.

Sally really needed her mom to reassure her that she was missed and loved but instead, mom jumps in to rescue little stepbrother and Sally is expected to join back up to the family without delay.

Sally begins to think that dad may be right, maybe mom doesn’t love her as much as she used to. Maybe mom loves her new family more. Now, she is not only cranky, tired, sick to her stomach and confused, but she is jealous and bitter toward her stepbrother and wishes things could just go back to the way they were before.

In that scenario, mom is in her routine and is under the assumption that Sally is as well. She missed the opportunity to be an ambassador and was instead the queen frantically making sure everything was in its proper place.

An ambassador would have greeted Sally with a loving hug and bent down to look into her eyes and ask about her weekend. Five minutes could have made such a difference in Sally’s reentry into the home. An ambassador would have strived to keep peace and to preserve relationships.

This challenge magnified for us recently when we moved Dane’s parents into our home.

We brought most of the furniture from their small apartment into three rooms. Our guest room, guest bathroom and office/workout space became their new apartment. For those wondering –the overflow of our belongings that didn’t make the trip to Goodwill currently resides in my closet.

Caring for Dane’s parents was something I genuinely wanted to be able to do, but I was struggling with a selfish desire to enjoy the empty nest days first – maybe even for a year or two.

My friend who shared those words about her home being an embassy had no idea what an impact they would make on my life. Thank God those words – embassy or castle – were given to me at the very time I needed to hear them the most. Isn’t God’s timing amazing!

Do your guests feel as if they are walking into your castle when they come through your front door? Are they afraid to touch anything? Does your house feel cold and unwelcoming?

Do your children feel that you are sitting on your throne looking down and judging them as they enter your chambers? Are they peeking around for the gallows in the back yard or the dungeon below?

Or instead, do those who enter your home feel safe and protected? Do they feel loved and accepted? Is your home a warm and welcoming place in which relationships are restored and preserved? Are you an ambassador rather than a queen?

I want my home to be an embassy and not a castle! What if we adopted that motto and instead of making our homes a castle unto ourselves, we made it an embassy for Jesus Christ. How would our children, our in-laws and our guests feel in our homes?

Could our homes then be used to foster the greatest need that we all have – a need for Jesus Christ?

It’s a lot to think about.

Until next time, step gracefully!