900 Square Feet.

900 Square Feet.

I can't help but feel this story over and over again.

Because it feels refreshing, it feels valuable, it feels encouraging, it feels like real life, and real memories, and real truth.

There are days all I see is big houses and expensive cars and boutique clothes and think I've got to run and chase after the dream.  I think that's the accomplishment, that's the mission, that's the goal.  And if only we could get there, we'd have room for everything we need.

But the Lord put rest in my heart with a conversation with a friend.  She's in her fifties, children grown, with a well-established home in an elite neighborhood of Charlotte.  She and her husband have "arrived," have "made it."  And our conversation flowed to their early years, intertwined with Mark and I's ambitions and worries and work.

But the Lord smiled upon us with her story.  900 Square Feet.  It was the size of their first house, lived in for ten years, raising their children there, until they were 7 and 4.  A boy and a girl, sharing a bedroom.  A little tiny space, crowded but full with their memories.  Her husband worked and worked, struggling to feel like he was getting ahead.  And it wasn't until he was 35 that he did, and they moved. But for ten years they had 900 square feet of children and love and toys sprawled and blankets dragged and tears shed and meals made.

I think of them now, with a few other women I've talked to lately, who have lived in small spaces, with children sharing bedrooms, and yet have full lives.  And I think of years that children shared spaces, and toys had no rooms but boxes and kitchens were cornered and tight. Yet the food was cooked with care, beds tidied with comfort, books read on the couches.  And I think of our home, a beautiful space that we rest in, and am thankful.  Because memories are made in the house, no matter the size or splendor.  Their made at the Lawsons table, Heidi's canning counter, Trish's kitchen.  Places where love is served.

So no matter if the home is 900, 1400, or 4000 square feet, it is who we are with and how we live that life that honors, blesses, and serves those in it.