By Katie Ginn
If you’re driving toward Mount Nebo outside of Dardanelle, Arkansas, and you pass the old chicken houses (if they’re still standing), you’ll eventually come to the first house I remember living in.
As a child on that property, I collected rocks, carried terrified cats around the yard, and endured my first-ever sting from a buzzing insect. Indoors, I watched a lot of TV and Disney movies and developed a love for letter writing.
More importantly, I spent time with my family. I read books with Mom, told Dad all about my day when he got home from work and made my baby brother laugh until he spit up.
When I was 8, we built a house in the larger town of Russellville nearby. That house is where I trotted down the stairs and told my parents I wanted to be baptized. It’s where Dad told me, “Being a Christian is fun,” but I needed to obey their rules. It’s where Mom and I threw rolled-up socks at each other from either side of the guest bed. (Yeah, being a Christian was fun!)
That house is also where I grew from an awkward kid into an awkward teen and, finally, a slightly less awkward high school graduate. Progress!
After a smorgasbord of living situations in college, I moved back in with my family, this time in Madison County, Mississippi. As someone whose faith was springing into life, I pored over scripture in my bedroom for hours; as someone with undiagnosed OCD, I probably overdid it.
One day at the kitchen sink, I told Mom I might visit a new church. She said the name over the door didn’t matter as long as I was going. I made the drive down 463 to the interstate for that church plant, and for work (I now had my first big-girl job). After a while, I started to feel like Gluckstadt and Northeast Jackson were competing for my attention.
Then came the years of roommates and their dogs, six of each. I spent a year in an apartment before moving into a northeast Jackson rental where I and a procession of other women and canines would live for seven years.
That house on Valley Vista Drive is where I lived when I started seeing a Christian counselor – and when I took over MCL. I don’t have space to write about all the messy, beautiful life that happened at Valley Vista, or the night I pounded on my bedroom floor as a desperate single woman and cussed at God. (I think the roomies were out, or I would’ve cussed more quietly.)
In 2020, when the pandemic was high and interest rates were low, my parents helped me buy a house in the Gluckstadt area. I was 32 and still longed for a relationship, but moving into my own home gave me space to breathe – and something else to think about. By God’s grace, I grew to be OK in my singleness. Less than a year later, I met Stephen.
God has used all of my homes to shape me, but He’s mostly done it through the people I’ve lived with (or not).
In Arkansas, my parents sat with me on the couch and asked questions about why I wanted to be baptized. It doesn’t matter what the couch looked like. It matters that my mom and dad were with me.
In Oxford, my cinder-block dorm room affirmed the importance of community after a would-be roommate never materialized. A larger-than-life-size poster of my favorite rock star was no substitute for a friend.
In Jackson, my roommates shared their food, prayed with me, and initiated game nights. The dogs dug holes in the backyard, and our landlord had to jackhammer our bathroom to fix a plumbing issue, but I never lacked people who loved me.
As I make the final changes to this column, Stephen and I are preparing to have friends over tonight. We’ve tried our best to exterminate the dust bunnies and throw the right throw pillows onto the right chairs. But that’s not what makes a house a home.
A home is where God’s presence and love embrace you, whether you’re crossing the threshold of a double-wide, a three-bedroom with a mortgage, or something in between. Let’s ask God to transform our houses into homes like that – for our families and for anyone else we welcome in.