Some years ago while in the hospital, I took advantage of their cable system to watch HGTV. There were several popular makeover shows on HGTV at the time, but we didn’t get that station in our cable plan. This was before almost every network had a streaming service.

Unfortunately, the day that I watched, none of the popular shows were on. The station was showing a marathon of a series about people who had won the lottery and were looking to upgrade their housing.

As I watched these families tour several houses worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, one thing stood out to me. Even at that level, with amenities most of us could only dream about, none of the home buyers found a perfect house with everything they were looking for. Sometimes the couple had different opinions about what they wanted in a house. Other times, two different houses had some, but not all, of the features they wanted, and they had to decide which was closest to their ideal.

I think most of us who have ever bought, or even rented a house have found the same thing. No one house has all we want. One house might have a beautiful, roomy kitchen, but the roof is going to need replacing soon. Another might have a nice garage and workspace, but only one bathroom for a large family.

We’ve lived in five homes over our 46 years of marriage. We rented a small mobile home from a professor at our college when we first married and lived there six years. We had not thought we’d stay in that area after graduation, but it seemed the Lord was leading that way. So we bought our first home there, a fixer-upper that needed much more than we had to give.

We’ve lived in three more homes since, each necessitated by my husband’s workplace moving him to a new area. Each had plusses and minuses. But our previous home in SC was the one I had the most trouble with. We had looked at many houses that were much nicer and prettier. But this one had the room we needed at a price we could afford.

The family room had red and black checked carpeting–and our furniture was a pink and blue plaid. It was years before we could replace either the furniture or the carpet.

I had gotten used to a carport and not having to carry groceries through the rain. This house had no carport. Plus the previous house’s driveway was right next to the kitchen door. At our new house, we had to go through two rooms and up seven steps to get to the kitchen.

I don’t like peach at all, or orange except in fall decorations, but the kitchen had peach and blue flowered wallpaper. And pink and blue floral linoleum.

The living room had wallpaper on one wall that looked like a mural of a Mediterranean scene. My kids loved it, but I couldn’t stand it.

We just one and a half bathrooms here (and no master bathroom). We had to do showers and breakfast in shifts–whoever wasn’t in the shower was eating.

Our previous houses had wooded areas behind them. This one had the back yard of another house right behind us. When the trees were bare, I could see the recliner and its occupant in their family room from my kitchen window.

Our previous house had a fence, and we got our first and only puppy while there. It was nice to not worry about the kids wandering off. Our new house didn’t have a fence.

The kitchen area was cramped. There was so little storage in it, my husband put shelves in the coat closet in the living room for the bigger kitchen items. Our dining room table, which seated six, barely fit in the space for it.

Over time, one project at a time, we replaced wallpaper, painted, replaced carpet, and eventually replaced family room furniture. We never could figure out what to do about the kitchen. We talked about removing a wall or adding on to the outside. But our finances, time, and energy levels were never up for that big of a project.

I had to continually battle discontentment with that house. But, after we moved, it occurred to me that most of our sons’ growing-up years took place there. Most of their family memories were developed there. I imagine they’ll remember having friends over for pizza and video games, crowding around the table for meals or birthdays, riding some mattresses we were getting rid of down the stairs, playing in the nearby “bamboo forest,” jumping on the trampoline, helping with house projects, the bulk of their school years, the first serious girlfriend and wedding of one of them.

They’ll remember the home more than the house.

I don’t think it’s wrong to want to make our homes comfortable, pleasing, and attractive. I’ve appreciated Edith Schaeffer’s emphasis in her book, The Hidden Art of Homemaking, that God didn’t make the world just functional: He made it beautiful as well. She says, “If you have been afraid that your love of beautiful flowers and the flickering flame of the candle is somehow less spiritual than living in starkness and ugliness, remember that He who created you to be creative gave you the things with which to make beauty and the sensitivity to appreciate and respond to His creation” (p. 109).

We have to balance those desires for creativity, beauty, and functionality with the time, finances, and energy we have. And we need to remember that even some of the humblest homes here will look luxurious to others.

But we usually have to be content with a less than perfect house to some degree. Probably no house will ever have every little feature we might like. One reason for that might be that if we had a perfect house, we’d be too tempted to nestle down into it, too content in this world and not looking forward to the next.

C. S. Lewis has written, “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

The Bible reminds us, as the old hymn says, that this world is not our final home.

• “We do not have an enduring city here; instead, we seek the one to come” (Hebrews 13:14).
• “But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).
• “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2).
• “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

Like all of God’s tangible gifts in this world, we appreciate them, but we hold them loosely. It’s not wrong to ask for a better or bigger house, but if God says no, we seek His grace to be content where He has us. We can effectively serve Him and minister to others in whatever kind of home He allows us to have. And we can let that longing for a perfect home remind us we’ll never find it here and fuel our desire for the heavenly one to come.

Prayer for the Home

Peace, unto this house, I pray,
Keep terror and despair away;
Shield it from evil and let sin
Never find lodging room within.
May never in these walls be heard
The hateful or accusing word.

Grant that its warm and mellow light
May be to all a beacon bright,
A flaming symbol that shall stir
The beating pulse of him or her
Who finds this door and seems to say,
“Here end the trials of the day.”

Hold us together, gentle Lord,
Who sit about this humble board;
May we be spared the cruel fate
Of those whom hatreds separate;
Here let love bind us fast, that we
May know the joys of unity.

Lord, this humble house we’d keep
Sweet with play and calm with sleep.
Help us so that we may give
Beauty to the lives we live.
Let Thy love and let Thy grace
Shine upon our dwelling place.

Edgar Guest

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)