After making eleven moves in the course of my eighteen year life, my family has come to describe memories or events by “houses” rather than by years.

Our most recent move occurred two weeks ago, and though the new house is smaller we’ve begun listing the things we like about it. To begin with, it’s the warmest house we’ve been in since I was two. I don’t think I ever realized that most people don’t go to bed at night in two pairs of pants, socks, a hoodie, and hat. In our new house, mom and I quickly realized that you only have to wear half as many layers!

As I cleaned up after breakfast this morning I couldn’t help admiring the kitchen. Dad and I installed new hardwood floors, cabinets and appliances, and honestly, it looks like Better Homes and Gardens! The whole house has had a fresh coat of paint, new flooring, and cute decorations. I think it may be the most beautiful house we have lived in. To test my theory, I thought back to the other houses over the years.

One house had orange shag carpet, brown paneling, and a moldy bathroom. But, I remember my sisters and I screaming with laughter as we chased my escaped bunny all over the house. The pond in the backyard held our own Loch Ness Monster, but despite our fears, we found an old leaky rowboat buried in the mud, and ventured out monster hunting, oars and eyes ready.

Another house had a creepy cellar, snakes in the backyard, narrow, rickety stairs, and a decaying deer head in front of the barn that scared the wits out of me. We were so secluded that nights alone were scary. When my dad wasn’t home we would climb into my mom’s bed, and I’d go to sleep with the “22” on the floor next to me. Bring on the robbers- I was ready. I rode my bike up and down the half mile drive way all summer, and had a billion forts in the woods, and found a baby deer. The place was amazing, even if the floors were so uneven my toys rolled away.

When we lived in along the Mexico border, we stayed in a garage. It was crowded, and in the morning you’d better shake the cockroaches out of your shoes before putting them on, or you’d hear that familiar “crunch”. There was enough snakes, sand, and spiders to content even Crocodile Dundee. From sun up till sun down, I played outside, took boxes of supplies into Mexico, ate Olga‘s amazing food, and stared big eyed at the little Mexican girl trying to teach me Spanish. There may have been cockroaches, but I’ve got an amazing picture of a little girl in a brown jumper and crazy dark curls sitting on the curb; one white face among a row of Hispanic children.

As I thought about our different houses, and the beautiful memories woven into the shag carpets, and dingy curtains, it all boiled down to one statement. “You can let your home define how you live, or define your home by how you live.”

Our present home, with all it’s gentle colors, and quiet beauty isn’t how my family is defined. If one’s home is how they define themselves, we would have been too busy renovating the Mexico garage to do any work with the people and the orange carpet would have been a more vivid memory than watching the orange sunset on the monster pond. Where you live doesn’t matter, it’s how you live that counts.

This house is beautiful, but the cream carpets will soon grow dingy, the front porch will sag, and sooner or later the roof is going to leak. -our water pipes have already frozen- I only hope that the memories made in this house will be as fun filled and precious as the ones from the “Yellow Swamp House” or the “Tornado House” or the “House Behind Wal-Mart”

There’s something more important than just making memories though. I never want to grow so concerned with my physical comfort that I miss seeing the needs of the people around me. I never want to make my home so perfect, that imperfect people feel unwelcome. I never want to make my home so clean that the unclean feel shunned. I never want to love my home so much that I would resist God’s call to give it all up for Him. I never want to define how I live by my home, I want to define my home by how I live.

The internet can be educational and enriching. It can be used to enlighten and expand the mind to greater aspirations of thought.

It also can be a total waste of time, with hilarious results…

After my sister took Dr. Phil’s personality test- I had to try it myself. After finishing the test, and receiving an answer that remotely resembled me, I noticed an interesting link. The website, called Psych Central, offered another quiz that I decided was too good to pass up.

There, in big, bold, prominent letters there was a quiz that read: Do I Need Therapy?

I couldn’t resist, (you know you would have taken it too!)

Now, I would consider myself a remotely “normal” person. I’ve had very few harrowing experiences in my life. I’ve suffered no dramatic childhood accidents. Other than being dropped on my head a few times, my life has been pretty picturesque. I was relatively certain that I was mentally stable- so I took the test in good confidence. Ten questions later, my world plummeted to the ground. According to Psych Central- I am in need of therapy. Some of you may be secretly agreeing with my test results…but I found them outrageous, yet hysterical. They also prompted thought…

Perhaps the reason so many of the every day people in this country need self help groups, psychologists, counseling, motivational speakers, and yoga, is because we tell them that they do. I believe that the growing instability within our culture is based on the fact that we’re telling them that they’re unstable! What bothers me though, is the growing need for a Christianized version of all these things. I agree that there is a need in this world for Christian counselors. I believe it enough that I’m spending the next two years of my life in preparation to do just that. But when helping someone see the simple, yet powerful truths of my Jesus, becomes a complicated web of worldly ideas, there’s a problem.

We’ve bought into a lie.

It’s a lie that says we’re unstable.

My mom used to say that there’s a grain of truth in every lie, and this one is no exception. We most definitely are unstable. We’re humans with a sin nature, and apart from Jesus we’re about as useful as a side of ham during Passover. The lie comes in when we begin to look around us for the answers to solve our instability. The answer doesn’t lie in the many trails, highways, and roads around us. To find the only path which leads to freedom you have to look straight ahead. There’s only one road, and it’s narrow.

That road may actually be harder to travel than the paved streets around us. But the difference is, the narrow path requires One Book, and a whole lot of Jesus. The other paths requires more self help literature than you could read in a life time, and Dr. Phil on speed dial.

There’s stability in having one book, and one God. The instability is created when we try and balance a stack of books on meditation and yoga, while groveling in worship before our motivational speakers.

There is only one truth, and it’s not going to be found by “looking inside yourself”. It can only be found when we look outside ourselves and see our condition. As John Newton expressed it, “I am a great sinner, and Christ is a Great Savior.”

I don’t think I’m going to need any therapy.