Home is where you feel most alive, part 5

But this is another way the Lord works.

I love being at home.
I love being here with Ben.
Ben and I love it here.

*Pic from the night we got engaged!

Home has felt safe. A refuge. A place of peace.

I ENJOY being a little homemaker... yes, cooking, cleaning, baking, decorating, what have you. Not because I have to or feel like this is a part of being a wife, but because I WANT to.

Ben and I share all the chores around the house, but especially since he's the one out there working hard, on the days he is working, I love being able to serve him by being able to do more things around the house.

I never knew it would be this way. But I truly enjoy doing it because I love him. And I know it blesses him, blesses US, to have and create and environment where our souls can be free. To keep the house picked up and the sink clear and the dishwasher unloaded and the living room tidied up, not because I have to or he doesn't also do those things, but because I enjoy taking care of our home we have together and making home feel like home.

I never saw that one coming. If you would have told me that this was how it was going to be a year ago I would have laughed at you, but love is a mysterious thing :)

And I love being a wife! It was always a longing and desire of my heart and this gift is not something I deserve but is just another piece evidence of His grace in my life.

Apart from our home, I feel at home with Ben.

John Eldredge calls love,

“Finding someone only your heart recognizes.”

There was a soul connection that grew deeper and deeper from our first few weeks of dating and till now.

My heart knew that this time it was different.
That there was something more going on.

That our souls were uniting.

Each day I find myself thanking God more and more for bringing Ben into my life.

I never knew love could be this way.

Ben has and marriage has been everything I dreamed of and more. As cheesy as it sounds, I don't know how else to say it. Both are nothing short of a gift, let me give thanks and praise the Giver.

::

It still gets me all the little things, even from the beginning that Ben says or does that are straight from the heart of the Father and things that the Lord knows I need most specifically to be loved... or the little things that I never told Ben, but that he just says or does that remind me again and again, that my Father knows me so well and has chosen and brought the perfect partner for me to journey and live life with, the perfect partner, soul mate, for me.

Even like how he never calls me by my name, but answers every phone call, every text, or anytime he is speaking to me, the first words out of his mouth are “Hey beautiful...”

I asked him a few months into dating why he chose that word. I mean, of course the guy you're dating or marrying is going to think you're beautiful and tell you that you are... but like, I always say, “Hey sweetheart...” when I'm talking to him. He could've picked any word or “pet” name.

“Beautiful is what you are,” he answered me. “More than just your physical beauty, but your heart. You're beautiful.”

But before I could ever hear and even receive these words from any man, they had to first be heard and received from my first Love. The Lover of my soul, who wooed me and pursued me and won my heart and first spoke those words as He ransomed and redeemed my heart.

So, my home with Ben, and a feeling of being at “home” with him... where again,

I feel most free. Safe. Fully myself. Fully loved and accepted, wholly and unconditionally.

Where I feel cherished and valued, fought for, and not loved because of anything I can do, but because of the woman he sees deep within, because of who I am... yes, home. Home is truly where we feel most alive.

Anyway, like I was saying, I feel that now my life is more similar to the stay at home moms, where our day to day battles and experiences are more similar than when I was on the go and working from 9 am till 1 or 2 am, that being able to see the value in being home, in things being at a much slower pace, and find I have more things in common as I could never relate to marriage, or having time for crafting, homemaker, baking, etc talk, that now I see that staying at home is NOT a prison, not being stuck, but that there is a purpose and tremendous value to those seasons...

to be continued...