The Kitchen Table

 "Give thanks in all circumstance for this is the will of God..." (1 Thess. 5:18). 

After a week of being homeless and living with the in-laws, we finally made it to Logansport and our new old home. The day the movers were unloading boxes in our basement we had a toilet ring break...water flowing down through the basement ceiling through a light panel onto the floor. Welcome home! Baptized again. 

It's also the smallest house that we have lived in outside of the little 800 square foot 100-year-old farmstead house when we first were married. We had to put straw bales all around that place and wrap the house in visqueen plastic just to keep from freezing to death...the house never able to get up to 60 degrees. An early mummifcation process as Halloween pointed us to cooler temps. Remember the plastic that you put on the inside of the windows and then used a hair dryer to tighten it up? I've been trying to do that with my face wrinkles as of late but to know avail. But when your young and in love, freezing to death doesn't really matter. You just cuddle a little more. I lied. It does. But we had some wonderful memories in that house. We were young. We were poor. But it was our home. Lots of good memories at that little kitchen table where our girls learned to eat like animals with their hands and throw things on the floor in amusement. Figuring out how to control mom and dad early on in life. Go fetch. 

Our current kitchen is pretty small. It provoked us to remember the kitchens of our childhood homes. Mine...a two story farm house where to do dishes you had to pray that no one wanted to go from the kitchen table to the stairway. There was barely enough room for two. The stove out in the dining area as well as the frig. Deb's galley kitchen was much the same. But there were good memories in those places. You didn't realize what you didn't have and were thankful for what you did have. 

I can still see my Grandma Lute in her small farm kitchen, white flour spread out all over the yellow marbled Formica table, preparing to make those wonderful homemade Thanksgiving egg noodles. I can still see my Grandma Cains bending over with her baster to coat, one more time, the honey ham with pineapple slices (which she saved just for me). Houses. Homes. Memories. Love. 

Jesus didn't have a home to lay his head. Paul traveled all over the place getting beat up and thrown in prison. Freezing to death on cold stone floors. Hungry. Probably remembering his mother cooking in his childhood kitchen. Both men were thankful. Not because of what they lacked but for what could not be taken from them. Citizens of another country. Renters in this world. Houses. Homes. Memories. Love. 

As we downsize in life, I am praying that our kitchen not be a complaint of want of size, but will be another memory for us, for our girls, our grandkids, and for anyone that the Lord will allow us to share life with. Not just a house - but a home. Not just a kitchen table where we eat - but a place to be nourished. 

Thankful memories.