Chapter Four

Somewhere along the journey, I stopped looking for the next place and began learning how to be present in this one.

There is a chair on our balcony where I seem to do remarkably little.

I sit.

Sometimes I read.

Sometimes Maria and I take a drink outside as the Texas sun begins to disappear through the trees.

Sometimes we talk about important things.

Quite often we don’t.

The birds make an extraordinary fuss as they settle down for the evening. Squirrels treat the branches above us as their own private highway and playground. A raccoon family meander through the yard sometimes. Occasionally a wind chime catches enough of a breeze to remind us that it’s there.

And gradually, almost without noticing, your shoulders drop.

Shoes come off.

Feet find their way onto the railing.

The day loosens its grip.

I’ve come to treasure that place.

We call it the Front Porch.

Technically, it isn’t one. It’s a balcony at the back of the house.

But perhaps home has never cared very much about technicalities.

Finding home

I’ve lived in several places.

England.

Guernsey.

Now Texas.

I’ve lived in different houses and moved through different seasons. I’ve packed boxes, unpacked them, changed addresses, crossed an ocean and learned that Americans have some rather different ideas about what constitutes a reasonable distance to drive for dinner.

But somewhere along the way I’ve realised there is an enormous difference between having somewhere to live and being at home.

A house is architecture.

Home is something else entirely.

Home is the place where you don’t need to perform.

Where silence isn’t awkward.

Where the people around you know enough of your story that you don’t have to explain every chapter.

Where you can arrive tired.

Where laughter lives alongside difficult conversations.

Where someone can see that you’re carrying something before you’ve found the words to describe it.

Where you’re known.

And still welcomed.

Perhaps that last part matters most.

Peace has a sound

Our house isn’t silent.

That’s one of the things I love about it.

There are birds.

Music.

Conversations from the kitchen.

The occasional clatter of something being prepared.

Christian podcasts or worship music playing while Maria sits in the morning sunlight with coffee.

People arriving.

People leaving.

Life.

Yet underneath all of that, there is peace.

I’ve become increasingly fascinated by peace because I spent so many years assuming it would arrive when everything else was finally sorted.

When the business was right.

When the finances were right.

When the relationship was right.

When the next decision had been made.

When whatever problem was currently occupying my thoughts had politely removed itself.

Then, presumably, peace would turn up.

It doesn’t seem to work like that.

Peace has been teaching me that it can exist while life remains unfinished.

That might be one of the greatest gifts of this season.

The table

There is a large dining table downstairs.

Eight seats.

We don’t use all eight very often.

But I like that they’re there.

There is something wonderfully hopeful about an empty chair around a table.

It says:

Someone else could come.

Perhaps hospitality begins long before anybody knocks on the door.

It begins with creating room.

Room in the house.

Room in the calendar.

Room in the conversation.

Room in ourselves.

I’ve spent much of my professional life thinking about capacity in businesses.

These days I’m increasingly interested in capacity in people.

Have we left enough room in our lives for interruption?

For an unexpected conversation?

For someone who needs longer than the thirty minutes we’d mentally allocated them?

For dinner that becomes an evening?

For friendship?

For God to change the plan?

Efficiency is useful.

But I increasingly suspect that some of life’s most meaningful moments are terribly inefficient.

Someone beside you

Home has also taught me something about companionship.

There are journeys we have to walk ourselves.

Nobody else can do our healing for us.

Nobody else can make our decisions.

Nobody else can have our faith on our behalf.

But that doesn’t mean we were designed to walk alone.

There is something profoundly different about having someone beside you who doesn’t need to fix the journey.

They simply share it.

Maria and I talk a lot.

At the breakfast bar.

In the car.

Walking through stores.

Over dinner.

On the balcony.

Sometimes about faith.

Sometimes about business.

Sometimes about our future.

Sometimes about absolutely nothing that would survive being written down.

And perhaps that’s part of love.

Not merely sharing life’s extraordinary moments.

Sharing its ordinary ones until you realise they weren’t quite so ordinary after all.

I spent years thinking meaningful lives were constructed primarily from significant events.

I’m less convinced now.

I think they may be built from thousands of seemingly insignificant moments that we were present enough to notice.

Making it ours

The house itself is changing in a very intentional way.

Nothing dramatic.

Nothing to affect the feeling of peace.

Plants and reading chairs are placed.

Pictures hung with meaning.

There are ideas for the yard.

Conversations about a pool one day.

Small decisions that say:

This is becoming ours.

I love that.

Because perhaps making a home isn’t really decorating.

It’s belonging.

It’s leaving traces of shared life in a place.

A coffee cup on the counter.

Books beside a chair.

Plants that somebody remembered to water.

Photographs.

Art chosen because it meant something.

A blanket left over the back of a chair because somebody will probably want it again tomorrow evening.

Home accumulates evidence that people have lived there.

Loved there.

Rested there.

Prayed there.

Argued there.

Forgiven there.

Dreamed there.

And started again there.

A different kind of success

If you’d asked me twenty years ago what success looked like, I’m pretty sure I would not have described any of this.

There probably would have been more numbers involved.

More achievement.

More destinations.

Perhaps a larger title.

Those things aren’t wrong.

But my definition has changed.

Success looks increasingly like having meaningful work without being consumed by it.

Having enough rather than endlessly needing more.

Being able to sit still.

Being deeply known by a few people rather than vaguely known by thousands.

Having somewhere peaceful to return to.

Having someone you love sitting in the other chair.

Knowing who you are when nobody is impressed.

And being grateful.

Especially being grateful.

The presence of God

There is something else about home that is harder to describe.

I don’t believe God lives more strongly in one building than another.

And yet there are places where we become more conscious of His presence.

For me, this house has become one of those places.

Not because anything dramatic happens.

Quite the opposite.

God seems increasingly present to me in the ordinary.

Morning light.

A conversation.

Music playing somewhere in the house.

A meal.

The trees moving in the breeze.

Maria sitting beside me.

A prayer that doesn’t need many words.

Perhaps I spent too much of my earlier life expecting God to announce Himself through extraordinary moments.

These days, I’m learning to notice Him in ordinary mornings and evenings.

That feels important.

Because most of life is made of ordinary mornings and evenings.

Why there is a Front Porch

And that brings me back to the balcony.

This platform didn’t really begin as a branding idea.

It began with a feeling.

The feeling of sitting somewhere safe enough to exhale, just like I do at home.

Somewhere conversation doesn’t need an agenda.

Somewhere difficult questions are allowed to remain unanswered for a while.

Somewhere faith isn’t performed.

Somewhere there is room.

I began wondering what it might look like to create something like that online.

Not another place demanding attention.

A place offering it.

Not somewhere telling people how successful they could become.

Somewhere reminding them that their life already contains things worth noticing.

Not a stage.

A porch.

A chair.

A conversation.

And perhaps, occasionally, enough perspective to take the next step.

Stay awhile

I don’t know what home looks like for you.

Perhaps you’ve found it.

Perhaps you’re building it.

Perhaps you’re grieving one you’ve lost.

Perhaps you’re in a season where nowhere feels particularly like home at all.

I wouldn’t pretend those experiences are the same.

But I have learned this: Home is not created all at once.

Like most meaningful things, it is built through experience and faithfulness.

One conversation.

One meal.

One act of forgiveness.

One ordinary evening.

One decision to remain present rather than reach for whatever comes next.

One chair pulled out for somebody else.

One faithful step at a time.

And perhaps that’s why there will always be room for one more on the Front Porch.