Creating a Safe Home in a World That is Unsafe

In a recent counseling session I told my counselor that I have a vision of my home being a safe haven for our family. A home where, at the end of a long day, my husband can enjoy a warm meal, relax in a clean home and leave the stress of his work day at the door. A home where my kids can enter after a long day at school, they can walk through our front door and know they will be fully accepted and loved and can feel peace ... all while eating warm chocolate chip cookies straight from the oven.

Sounds amazing....AND incredibly unrealistic. Very "Pottery Barn Pinter-esque". I just made up a new 2020 phrase and I think it fits.

My counselor asked me “Brittany, what threatens this dream of your home being a “safe haven”? I began to rattle off things like, “When the kids fight.” “When someone gets sick.” “When my husband feels extra stress from clients and he can’t leave that stress at work.” "When we have unexpected vet bills." “When I burn the cookies”.

You see, the problem with this vision is that it doesn’t allow grace for the fact that our home is FULL of sinners. Our home is by it's very nature, broken. If I hold too tightly to this vision, I’m expecting perfection from imperfect people and I actually create an environment that feels threatening and creates an expectation of perfection.

I create the expectation on myself that I have to MAKE things perfect and I also foster attitudes of entitlement within my children when they come to expect perfection and they don't receive it.

This vision doesn’t allow for my kids and husband or even myself to experience pain, anger, frustration, heartache, brokenness or sin.

My counselor pointed out that by allowing my children to fight, by giving my husband the space to feel stressed, by showing myself grace for a messy home or an adult temper tantrum or burned cookies, I’m actually creating the “safe haven” that I so greatly desire.

My family should know that in our home, we allow fighting. We allow anger and stress and anxiety. We embrace our messy brokenness without judgement. We choose forgiveness and we model grace to ourselves and each other even on the days where someone has the stomach flu, half the puzzle pieces are missing, dad has lost his temper and one kid is streaking through the house naked.

I share all of this with you because we are in an especially hard season as a family. This vision of my home as a “safe haven” feels threatened often minute to minute. And, with the added stress of school closures and the panic going on outside of the walls of our home, we’re going to be spending LOTS of quality time together over the next several months. I get to decide what I want the next several months to look like and how I want our time as a family in this season of extra closeness to be remembered.

This morning a friend reminded me that, “The world can feel chaotic but our homes don’t have to.” This seems counter-intuitive when I’m sharing that I want my kids to feel free to fight and that I want the grace for myself to have a bad day. Just by admitting this, it feels like I'm inviting chaos into our home.

I think the point is that WE SET THE TONE in our homes for what FEELS like chaos. If we as parents react to every high pitched scream, every whine, every tantrum, every little thing that throws off our day, we DO create a sense of chaos inside the walls of our home. When we CREATE the sense of chaos, then the dream for our “safe haven” IS threatened because our home is no safer than standing in the middle of mass hysteria at our local grocery store.

However, if we choose to breathe deep through the bickering, to redirect when we’re at one another’s throats, to throw impromptu dance parties in the kitchen in our underwear, to play endless amounts of board games and to laugh when one kid is a sore loser, rather than becoming angry because the vision for a "picture perfect" afternoon has gone ary...It is only then that the energy in our homes feel SAFE for the ones that we love.

And so, I am working on training my brain to think quite a bit differently about what a "safe haven" within the walls of our home can and should look like.

It doesn't need to be home with stain free couches and perfectly plumped throw pillows and fresh baked cookies on the counter. It doesn't need to be a home free from fighting or potty training accidents or nap boycotts. We don't need to be a Stepford family that feels the need to walk on eggshells around one another to all be happy.

A "safe haven" can AND should be a home where we each feel accepted and loved in spite of sin. Safe to feel allll the emotions. Safe to ugly cry. Safe to be messy. Safe to be humble and willing to ask for forgiveness on the really ugly days when we've hurt one another and need a fresh start. I am coming to believe that with this perspective in mind, our homes in all of their messy, chaotic glory, can STILL feel like a safe haven from an outside world that is broken and scary.

Love, Brittany