A symbol of home…

What if we starting thinking about our homes as the pot that holds the soil where our lives grow?

Would we do things differently?

I thought about this idea after two summer windstorms destroyed two different sets of cachepots.

On the first incident, I was leaving our house and saw from the street that one of a pair of brown triangular pots was broken. The beautiful red Sun Parasol plants and the soil they were growing in was all over the ground and I was sad. But the clay pots were old and probably not intended for outside use, so I said, “Oh well” and cleaned up the mess, when I got home. A few days later I bought two new cachepots and added more soil to the plants.

The second set of pots was made of a heavy a terra-cotta. They were painted brick-red and had a cream-colored medallion embossed on them. They were inexpensive but well made. I liked these even more than the old ones.  And ironically I wasn’t too concerned that they would break; the storm was a fluke for this time of year. But they did, less than a week after being on the stairs.

This time I opened my front door to do a quick once-over before my mom and her friends arrived and I found my plants thrown out of the cachepots and onto the ground again. Some of the branches were going the wrong direction and now I have gotten mad.

So what kind of pot is going to be suited to do the job? Thinking about this, I realize that the plants were probably too top-heavy for the first two sets of pots. It made sense the wind was slinging them to the ground. And the pots were easily breakable. Maybe next time I would get a pot that looks like clay or stone, but isn’t. And yes I want the pot to be attractive, but it needs to protect the plant from damage, because it has the important job of holding the soil that nurtures the life of the plant.

Can this analogy help you think about something that you can do this week, month, year to make your home more functional because home contains the physical, emotional and spiritual soil that your life is growing in? And of course you want that life to be the best it can be…

Home-ista Kelly

P.S. I did get more pots. They are made of a resin that looks like stone.  Hopefully they will last. But even if they don’t this whole episode has given me a greater appreciation for the power of the pot… I mean the home.

By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; by knowledge its rooms are filled with all kinds of precious and pleasing treasures. Proverbs 24:3-4

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