Ruth Frost - Homes with Heart: Turning Living Spaces Into Loving Places

HOMES
with
HEART

Copyright 2021, Ruth Frost, M.Div

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-118-2

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-119-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020924584

Book design by Stacey Aaronson

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

This book is dedicated with deep gratitude to my families:
my first family, my current family, and our families of the heart.

It is also dedicated to the families of the world:
those who struggle to make home here,
and to all who leave this world a better place.

Home is where someone is expecting you,
where eyes shine their greeting
as you cross the threshold,
and a bark trumpets you to the household.

Home is where you
lay down whatever is burdening you,
tell whatever is bothering you,
and let yourself be found.

Home is where a memory, a dream,
a laugh, or a tear is freely shared,
until my story becomes our story
and endings become beginnings.

Home is where welcoming arms await you
as you come into this world,
and sending hands bless you
when you leave it.

Home is the company you keep until departure time,
watching with you through the night
until the rising sun lights your way.

Family is all your loved ones in whom you home
here and hereafter.
Love is the way home.

~ Ruth Frost, a poem inspired by my father

Homes with Heart is written for everyone who wants to take the next step in home living, which is home life design. We have all heard the saying Home is where your heart is. But when our hearts are weary or wounded or our lives uprooted, its hard to find home. Sometimes we struggle to be at home within ourselves or at home with one another. This book encompasses our journey to find and make home in the world. It provides guidance in turning living spaces into loving places that become homes with heart. Together, we explore how to create the homes we want to live in, how we choose families to enrich our living, and how caring communities can expand our experience of home. Ideally, our homes should express who we are and support the quality of life we seek, in the company of those we love.

As we search for home within ourselves and create home around us, we will look at some of the obstacles that can interfere with making homes with heart and explore ways to overcome them. We will also consider how we can redefine family more generously to include families of choice, or families of the heart, as I prefer to name them. Whether we live singly, with friends, or in family groups, the people in our lives shape and are shaped by the kind of homes we nurture. Over time, the homes we create will embody our stories and invite new stories from those who cross their threshold.

In writing this book, I relate some experiences in my life and my partners life that have had a formative influence on how we home together. I share how one special community extended extraordinary hospitality to us, and how we have drawn upon family of the heart to enrich our home life wherever we have lived. Included in this writing are conversations I have had with other people to further our understanding of the various ways people create home and family. All of this has strengthened my conviction that creating home is a relational and spiritual adventure that transcends mere habitation of physical space. We discover meaning and purpose when our living spaces become loving places.

When we work to turn our living spaces into loving places with the help of supportive communities, caring friends, and families of the heart, our homes sing. At their best, our homes have the power to both shelter us and renew us for the good work we do in the world. How we live in our homes will guide who we are in the world. When we extend refuge to those in search of safety, welcome, and belonging, we become part of the worlds family.

After twenty-seven years together, my partner and I fulfilled a late-in-life dream by purchasing our first (and likely last) home in an older historic urban neighborhood that was known for its preservation of bungalows built in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Five years later, we were invited to show our home in the Twin Cities Craftsman Bungalow Home Tour of Minneapolis/St. Paul. The day of the tour, we were amazed and delighted to host over five hundred guests in our small home.

Six months later, our family expanded to include our first grandbaby and his parents, who now live with us, together with our dog and cat. Baby paraphernalia has invaded our space. What was a showcase house for the tour has become a thoroughly lived-in home. Spit-up rags are draped over the arm of every chair, a playpen hides underneath the dining room table, and pet toys mingled with baby toys are strewn about everywhere. The house still has great ambience but much less orderand a lot more heart!

My hope is that these reflections inspire you to strengthen the heart of your home so you may find refuge within it, create your own family of the heart to enrich the joy of sharing it, and overcome those obstacles to homing that inhibit your freedom to fully live in it. If this book can help you accomplish this, it will have fulfilled its purpose, and you will have created a home with heart.

When we live with intention, we can be at home wherever we are. As we walk this journey together, may we all turn our living spaces into loving places that become homes with heart. In doing so, we embrace the dream of the world that extends hospitality to everyone. We discover friendship among strangers. In the words of Ram Dass, All we are doing is walking each other home. [] What if that is the most important thing we do in this life?

As a retired hospice chaplain, I have been deeply privileged to learn from many people with diverse spiritual perspectives and traditions as they prepared to go home and made their passage. What I have witnessed at their bedsides has convinced me that our life in this world is but one segment of our journey to carry home within us and create home around us. I have concluded my reflections with a few stories from my work in hospice. I have come to believe that ultimately, finding home means taking a spiritual journey in good company. We are all one. Together, the way home is love.

Note: All content in this book is based on actual events and actual people, but some names, places, and details have been altered or withheld for the purpose of protecting individuals privacy. Interviews are used by permission of the interviewees with their privacy similarly protected as desired.

I t was a crowded department store at holiday time. Harried people milled about, vying for the sale items. Waiting for my friend to finish her shopping, I noticed a small child in distress. He was alone, having been lured away by the toy aisle and now realizing he had become separated from his mother. As he called out for her through tears, I approached to comfort him. He looked at me, wanting to come to meto anyone who could helpbut knowing he was not supposed to speak to strangers, he stood frozen in panic and then backed away, still crying. I stopped my approach and asked a store clerk to announce where he was while I kept an eye on him just far away enough not to cause him to bolt.