My Heart Is Home Again

I want to paint. Decorate. Plant a garden. Rearrange the furniture. Buy new furniture. Dust. Organize. Polish the floors. I want to make Martha Stewart look at me and say, "Dang, girl. How do you do it?"

I want to cook delicious, from scratch, organic meals every night. I want to volunteer for every single committee at my children's' school. I want to join every group I can find. I want to make all my Christmas gifts this year. I want to 'dress' every day.  I want Stepford wives everywhere to be jealous of me.

Finally. After all that time, all those years of fighting the hairy beast of depression, I'm home. And it's mine.

When I woke up and looked around at my house I realized that it, like me, was just a shell. When we bought it, it needed work. As in every room needed wallpaper stripped, work. While I was fighting, and losing, my battle with depression, the house sat. It wasn't a home to anybody. It was just a place where I existed.

You see, I didn't pour my love, my heart,  into my home. It was a place to sleep. To eat. To fall, exhausted into bed and attempt to lose myself in unconsiousness.

Sometime around February I looked around the house and suddenly said, "What have I done?" Well . . . nothing. That was the problem. We'd remodeled some. But I wasn't in my home. So I began to change that.

Throughout the spring and summer I have painted and cleaned. Put up pictures. Organized and rearranged. Cleaned out flower beds. Planted (and killed) a garden. This? Is my home.

This morning as I came down the stairs in the darkness I had a flash of my girls walking down that very stairway. The stairs gleaming. Smiles on their faces as they greeted prom dates at the front door of their home.

I saw John bringing his friends over to hang out in our kitchen. Eating all our food. Bringing his friends to his home.

And that's when I fully realized that truly, my heart was home again.