Simply Living

This is our home. And has been for the past five years. In our thirty plus years of marriage, it’s the only home we’ve ever owned – and that’s just fine with me.

I’d always had this seemingly unattainable, “imagine if someday” kind of dream of living in a house right on the beach, with the ocean out my window, its waves lulling me to sleep at night. With this home, we can experience that anytime. Or if the mountains, rolling hills or a big city become our destination, we can live there too… for a day or a weekend or a month or more. An Italian friend once said to me, “You’re like snails, carrying your house around on your backs.” Indeed we are. And we love it.

Even now that we’re renting a two-bedroom house on a quarter of an acre of gorgeous land and birthing an artist community in Southern Portugal, Denny and I still sleep in our beloved home. I find people’s reactions humorous: “…You’re sleeping in the motorhome? So why are you renting a house?”.

Our house is a wonderful haven where we gather and we receive guests, where we eat and drink, share in conversation and pray, watch films and celebrate life together. 

But our home is still this 7-meter-long, six-wheeled space… because home for us is wherever God chooses to take us.

I love the simplicity with which this home requires us to live. There’s limited space for clothing and personal items, so we choose carefully what we truly need and discover that all the rest is just superfluous.

And sleeping in the motorhome, even when it’s parked in our driveway, is a sort of statement within our hearts – a commitment before God: we’re ready to go whenever you ask us to, and our destination will be wherever you send us. While we sow deeply and extravagantly into relationships everywhere we live – our hearts and our times are in His hands. Our roots lay in His soil.

Living this way helps me keep things in perspective. I was created to live in communion with my Father, the God of the Universe. I want to become more like Jesus with every day and to reflect His light and love to the world around me. I find that when my life is freer from all the material clutter that can so quickly accumulate and distract me, I have much more time and energy to dedicate to what’s really important – to what has eternal value.

And at the end of the day, the reality is that this Earth is not my home. I will always be longing for another place, for the One whose companionship I was created for.

So I love living simply. And simply love living.                                                                           Every day granted me is a gift for which I’m grateful.

Photo by Whitney Rae Hurst

“For we are resident foreigners and nomads in your presence, like all our ancestors; our days are like a shadow on the earth, without security”.             The Bible,  I Chronicles 29:15