Clarkson Sally - The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

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The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

Copyright 2016 by Sally Clarkson and Sarah Clarkson. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph of bread copyright Barbara Dudziska/Adobe Stock. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph of teacup copyright Sandra Vuckovic Pagaimo. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Joy A. Miller | FiveJsDesign.com

Edited by Anne Christian Buchanan

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clarkson, Sally.

The lifegiving home : creating a place of belonging and beoming / Sally Clarkson and Sarah Clarkson.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4964-0337-7 (sc)

1. HomeReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

BR115.H56C53 2016

248.4dc22 2015036220

Build: 2015-12-10 15:13:15

In honor of the Girls Club

Unless the L ORD builds the house,

They labor in vain who build it.

PSALM 127:1

Contents

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to our wonderful Tyndale team; our editor, Anne Christian Buchanan; Joel Clarkson; and all our precious friends and comrades who gave love, encouragement, and prayers and helped us through the writing and ideas of this book. We are so very happy to be able to give you a book of our dreams and couldnt have done it without these wonderful people as a part of our team.

Most of all, we are so very grateful to Clay Clarkson, Sarahs dad and Sallys adventure companion for thirty-four years of marriage. You have dreamed, collaborated, cultivated, and worked so diligently to give our home a story worth telling. We are deeply thankful God gave you to us.

The Adventure Begins

T HE ADVENTURE STARTED ON A WHIM. With a suitcase in my left hand, a laptop case and tote on my shoulder, and the luggage cart dragging behind me, I stumbled against the door of suite 209 and pushed it open with my shoulder. The cart lurched over the doorstep, propelling me farther into the room as I grabbed for the door, laughing at my decidedly ungraceful movements. With one toe balancing the cart and my finger just on the doorknob, I held the door open for Sarah, my nineteen-year-old daughter, who was lugging the laundry basket of extras we had thrown in for our week of retreatelectric teakettle, printer, candles, chocolateall the necessities!

When she was safely inside, I gratefully dropped a few bags on the couch and breathed a sigh of deep relief. We were finally, blessedly here. After several months of planning, several more months of crazy living, and a four-hour drive through a mountain pass, we had finally arrived.

We had come here to Asheville, North Carolina, to write a book together. With my husband, Clay, busy with his own project, Joy, my youngest, off to a favorite aunties house, and my two teenage sons away at camp, Sarah and I had decided to escape for a rare writing getaway. We were excited about this week of girl time and writing time in our favorite town.

Asheville, as I describe in the next chapter, is nestled in the arms of the Blue Ridge Mountains and has an air of mountain coolness that we absolutely love. Though it is famous for the incredibly beautiful Biltmore Estate nearby, it is also graced with dozens of lovely little shops, delightful cafs, and an excellent tearoomjust the places we would want to go in our moments of relaxation in between long hours of writing. Instead of holing up in the usual small motel room, we had even splurged and booked a suite complete with kitchen and a living room at a well-known hotel chain. We wanted everything to be beautiful and cozy as we sequestered ourselves away to do our work.

But now, as we stood in our suite with all our excited expectations chattering in our minds, we peered around, searching for the expected coziness. We had yet to see any sign of it.

First of all, as we approached the registration desk, wed had to walk alongside construction tape that kept us out of a work area. Just as we initialed the final form, a jackhammer had begun to pound away so that we had to shout to each other to be heard. And as to our accommodationswell, the kitchen and living room were definitely there, but that was about all that could be said of them. The floor was covered in stained, thin, nondescript gray-brown carpet, with a large wet spot in the middle that smelled of Lysol. A cheap, stiff couch with nary a pillow was pushed up against one wall. Old, torn wallpaper covered the kitchen walls, and the unmistakable smell of strong cleaning solution from the sink assaulted our noses.

A sudden silence fell. It didnt last long, though, for we quickly realized our room was right next to the elevator. A metallic ding, ding sounded every two minutes or so, and through the paper-thin walls we heard the voices of the maids chattering in the laundry room next door.

I plopped down on the couch, a huge sigh rising in my throat, and looked at Sarah. Weariness seemed to hover as a cloud around both of us, and I let the sigh out with a sort of groan attached.

Well, I thought, trying desperately to be optimistic, maybe if we light a candle the smell will go away, and if we borrow some pillows from the bed... Then I just gave up. There wasnt much chance of making this room cozy. The excitement of the last hours suddenly drained from me, and my body and mind both went limp. Just sitting in that room made me feel lonely and depressed, neither of which is a good condition for writing a book on lifegiving. From the look on Sarahs face, I knew she felt the same way.

Now, you must know we are not picky people. In fact, traveling has made us quite flexible and resourceful. This room threatened to overwhelm our usual resourceful optimism. But what else could we do? I knew nothing of the other hotels around town, and I really wasnt sure this one would release us from our reservation. I reached up to my temples, trying to rub away an emerging headache.

Then it popped into Sarahs mind that we had passed a bed and breakfast on our way into town. Though our family had traveled extensively, we had never stayed at a bed and breakfast because theyre rarely set up to handle six people at a time. But there were just two of us now, so maybe we could find a more personal and comforting atmosphere at a convenient B&B.