For many of us the word home brings warm thoughts and happy memories―far more than the dictionary's simple definition of "a place of birth or one's living quarters." For many of us, home is where the heart is. Yet it is even than that. It is the secure environment that allows our hearts to develop. A haven of growth, quiet, and rest. The place where we love and are loved. Sadly though, this kind of home is beginning to disappear as our busy society turns homes into houses where related people abide, but where there is no "heart." With a desire to help you nurture your family's heart, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay presents a clear blueprint for constructing a home that survives the variety of situations that you face in modern life. With Jesus Christ as the foundation, using tools such as common sense, realism, and traditions, you can build a secure, loving environment where every member of your family can flourish. Susan Schaeffer Macaulay grew up in Switzerland at L’Abri Fellowship, which was founded by her parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer. She and her husband, Ranald Macaulay, established and led the L’Abri branch in England for several years. She is the author of For the Family’s Sake and contributed to Books Children Love and When Children Love to Learn . Founder, England branch of L'Abri Fellowship; author, For the Family’s Sake For the Family's Sake The Value of Home In Everyone's Life By Susan Schaeffer Macaulay Good News Publishers Copyright © 1999 Susan Schaeffer Macaulay All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-58134-111-9 Contents Acknowledgments, Preface, 1 Who Needs a Home?, 2 Home — the Best Growing Ground for Children, 3 Free as a Bird, Dutiful and Humble as the Angels, 4 This Is Where I Put My Feet Up and Thank God, 5 The Home's Weight-Bearing Beams, 6 Taking Time and Care to Create the Home's Atmosphere, 7 The Glory of the Usual or Jack of All Trades, 8 The Infrastructure of Routine, 9 Of Beds, Balance, and Books, 10 Contentment, Thanks, and Enjoyment, 11 Choose Wisely and Leave Time for the Daily Rhythms, 12 Early Days, Vital Days, 13 Homes and Life in Community, 14 A Look at the Everyday All Around Us — All Year Long, Appendix, Notes, CHAPTER 1 Who Needs a Home? If you were to stop and ask a miserable refugee, "Who needs a home?" he or she would not think it a question worth answering. The cold winds of winter and gusting rain make the covering of canvas provided by a relief agency a poor shelter, and it is too noisy for conversation anyway. Turn to a sophisticated young business person in any city, and you might be rewarded for using such an old-fashioned word with a supercilious gaze. That person might also be speechless. " Home! " the gaze seems to exclaim. "That word isn't in my vocabulary or life. Nor is marriage. My parents used those words, and they are retired in a backwater." The dictionary tells us that home is the place where we live, whether we are single, married, young, or old. The definition also includes the idea of a family or another group living in a house. Further, it says that home is the place we are at ease. What is a tree without its roots held deeply in the soil? What is a cup without its saucer? What are letters if they aren't put into words and sentences? What is a child's life like if there is no home and no family to belong to? Most people agree that children need stable, loving homes. Are homes then a temporary arrangement for their care and development? Or, as many people seem to think, do homes only go with marriage? Novelist Jane Austen didn't think so. She lived in a little Hampshire village and made her home with her sister. This gifted writer stayed unmarried, but it never prevented her from having a balanced life within the ease of home and community. She wrote: Our Chawton home, how much we find Already in it to our mind; And how convinced that when complete It will all other houses beat That ever have been made or mended With rooms concise or rooms distended. We all need to think hard, or we may find ourselves rootless and drifting whatever our age. For many the very words family, home, commitment, and neighborhood convey agonies, fears, and questions. Others dream romantically about a warm, settled, creative, and satisfying life. But they find that nothing in the cold light of the everyday, the ordinary, can even begin to resemble the dream. They can become hopeless, bitter. On top of this, for children there are special considerations. As fewer of the routines and less of the atmosphere of everyday life can be taken for granted, the resulting confusion has caused uncertainty about how children thrive. They are like little seedlings, and they do need a particular environment to do well. The more we've learned about children's development, the more we realize that the hours and days from birth onward are the most formative in the whole of life. We now know that whether the child's brain w