I once traded ten years of my life for a dream — a dream ten thousand sizes too small and altogether the wrong color for me. You’d think I’d have known better, given what happened to my dad. Given how things turned out for the family in which I grew up. 

But our longings are our longings, aren’t they? And mine was for a house — preferably a lovely, wide-porched, cream-colored country home with plenty of room behind its charming exterior for our growing family to live a life of generous hospitality . . . for God, of course. But first we needed the right house, didn’t we? A settled, rooted place out of which to live said big, holy-purposed life.

And, given what happened with my dad and his house dream, we needed our house sooner rather than later. 

Are such dreams valid? Is God in our longings? 

I was around nine when Dad became gripped with a longing to plant our family of five in an A-frame chalet among towering redwoods. His dream took on the cinnamon hue of those velvet-barked, subtly fragrant giants of coastal California. I’m sure he foresaw the curl of woodsmoke rising into blue skies, no need for privacy curtains, years of family meals around the table, and peace. 

Sure, he and Mom would have to work more and harder to pay for the dream. More of his time spent away from us, commuting to the college in the next county where he added both summer and night classes to his teaching schedule. More of Mom’s time was spent working inside and outside the home while riding the bucking bronco of perimenopause. 

Tension and tears reigned for several years, as my siblings and I saw less and less of Dad and more and more of Mom’s fragility. 

But everything was going to be okay, right? Because now the property was being excavated. Now the foundation was being poured. And now, at last, the sweet scent of sawdust bespoke a promise, as a maze of framing rose into the forest canopy. 

Would things have gone differently if we’d known how soon Dad would be gone? That, ultimately, three of the four years we lived together as a family in that redwood oasis would be spent under the tarry-black cloud of his lung cancer battle?

At first I didn’t notice the parallel between my father’s longing and mine — my obsession with house plans and vacant lots, or the way I spoke to my children of the free and simple Jesus-life, all while privately harboring the farmhouse-shaped craving that owned me. 

And then, at last, my husband and I had it — our cream-colored dream house in the pines! Welcoming porch and spacious kitchen. Hardwood floors and river-rock fireplace. Jacuzzi tub and even a bidet. 

The washboard road of faith lessons it took to get here was behind us. Except that, within the span of a year, ahead of us lay a cliff. A terrifying health crisis for our oldest. Job losses for both me and my husband. My mother’s death. 

Now here I was, shedding tears in my beautiful bathtub, as wrung out and hormonal as Mom had once been. 

We faced a choice — go big or go home. Going big meant fighting to maintain our new digs, contending for bright and shiny (read: demanding) jobs to replace those lost. But what, we’d begun to wonder, might it mean to go home?

Frederick Buechner wrote, as published in The Clown in the Belfry, “If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand . . . we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for . . . The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.” 

To “go home” might mean our family could downsize. We could come to a full stop, listen for direction. We could make room for serving Jesus in the ways that moved our hearts. 

Never had we been as sure about anything as this: We’d sell our dream house. Laughter bubbled up — we were free! 

For years now, a quirky, old 1300 square-foot house has provided a home base for discovering what it means to venture further up and further in. For stepping into the most satisfying and meaningful assignments this side of our eventual heavenly home. 

The right color for my longings, I’m learning, is the crisp white of a blank canvas. An empty-handed invitation: Lord, paint me into your Kingdom wherever and however you deem good and beautiful. 

To “go home” is to surrender our narrow ideas of home. It’s to say, I don’t care what lies ahead, if only God will be there. It’s to recognize our longings as signposts, ever directing us home to more of Him.

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