The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

by Sally Clarkson

So much of life consists of dusty, normal days often punctuated by sickness (that no doctor can diagnose), thorny relationships (especially those involving family), general struggle (flat tires, money, irritation), and loneliness. I am keenly aware that my love of beauty is equaled by my total inability to force my life to be beautiful. The world and I myself are profoundly broken. My natural impulse in the midst of this is a quick discouragement that seeps into every vein of my being. It can end in a dark numbness of heart that leaves me incapable of either seeing beauty or allowing it to teach me hope. That is what I think I instinctively feared on that long-ago March evening with my mom. And yet, despite the grief of life in the broken places, my heart still catches glimmers of what life was meant to be, echoes from the shattered gladness of original Creation.