Home

Cleaning our front porch yesterday, straightening the chairs, shaking the rug and sweeping, made me think of the playhouses I had when I was little. I made them myself, picking up sticks and laying them on the ground as outlines for rooms.  I would use chips of broken dishes I found for the "kitchen." Not having another girl to play with, it was totally up to me to use my imagination for my play, and I remember being embarrassed when a grown-up sister looked at my creation.  Kind of like when a parent visits a child's school room and enters his "world".

At that age, we lived on a hilltop in the blackjack woods of Oklahoma.  There was a scenic bluff behind our house that we children called "The Big Rocks."  It was our favorite place to play and a gathering place for my older siblings. I remember looking down toward the bottom lands below and singing at the top of my lungs, "When it's springtime in the Rockies," confident that the song was about our location. One of my playhouses was a big, flat rock with a carpet of green moss hidden among the thick bushes and saplings. (I abandoned this hideaway when I found a big snake coiled in the middle of my "carpet" one day!)

It was about this time that I was taken to church for the first time by an older sister who was fervent for the Lord. I didn't understand much, but a couple years later I remember being touched mightily by God when a friend and I knelt at our pew. We were crying our eyes out and so joyful!

I thought about this Sunday when the righteous child-king Josiah came up in our Sunday School lesson. Our teacher asked how many had been saved as a child. Many hands went up, and although mine didn't, I'm pretty sure that's when I was saved.  I  was filled with the Holy Spirit at age 13 when our family turned to God after the tragic loss of my little brother.

I still enjoy homemaking! I have loved and decorated several homes in our 58 years of marriage, the longest tenure being 20 years where we raised our children in Mississippi. But my heavenly home Jesus is preparing will outshine them all!

"In my father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."  --Jesus, John 14:2-3.