My favorite times are when my family - all four of us are at home at the same time.  Life is good when we’re all here together.  But this summer, my husband and children have traveled a lot.  Our summers are always busy, but this one was probably the busiest ever as the kids have gone from camp to camp and as Mike has had to travel for work a little more than usual.

One of my summer goals was to clean up and paint the kids’ rooms while they were away. To be honest, I didn’t think we would actually finish them, but we did it.

About 10 years ago when we put new paint and paper in our darling daughter’s room. It was such a beautiful room….pink and blue hearts with a deep pink on the lower half of the walls. I hung a quilt from her baby bed on the wall in matching colors and hung her baby pictures everywhere. It really was adorable. We invited her in to see the finished project but it was not a typical Trading Spaces finale.  She stuck her thumb in her mouth (she was barely 3 years old) looked all around the room, pulled her thumb out and then said, “This is pretty. But I like yellow.” Then promptly stuck her thumb back in and just stood there.

From that moment on she’s been asking when she can redo her room. By the time she was 7 or 8 I began telling her that we’d redo her room for her 13th birthday. It really seemed a lot farther away than it actually was so I felt comfortable committing to such a large project by then.  The time passed very quickly and this spring she turned 13. It amazes me that children can’t remember where they left their homework but they can remember something you promised off-hand when they were 7…..

And that’s what started the whole thing…..

At first I was afraid of the project. It was going to be necessary to re-texture her entire room before we could paint and I had never done that before. But as we got started, it turned out to be fun (even though it was extremely hard work) to remove the beloved heart wallpaper and wash the drywall compound off that we had used to smooth the walls years ago. It took 3 weeks to empty, clean, remove wallpaper, paint, and refill her small bedroom. One delay was in waiting for her to select new bedding and then wait for it to be delivered. But the day finally came when we hung the last picture and said the “Ta DA!” Guess what she said…. Yep. She stuck her thumb in her mouth ( as a joke, of course), pulled her thumb out and said, “This is pretty, but I like yellow.” Kids are a laugh a minute, aren’t they?

With a ton of help from my mom, we were able to finish my beloved son’s room in just less than a week while he was on a Philmont trek. There were holes to patch and colors to choose, but after deciding to match it to his bass and electric guitar, which are both black and white, it was easy to forge ahead.

But I have to tell you what I learned while working on those two rooms this summer. As I worked, my thoughts weren’t on what to cook for dinner or what was the next activity on our schedule. My thoughts were on the child I was missing and the place that we were preparing for them. Every brush stroke and every dip of the roller was an act of love. My anticipation for their return was heightened as I worked toward having the room completed, clean, and filled with things that they would love.

As I worked my thoughts began to hover around how Christ must feel as He prepares our homes in Heaven.  If you think about it, its not hard to imagine how much love He must be pouring into every decision as He readies Heaven for our eventual homecoming.  My excitement began to grow as the homecoming of my children drew closer, and I couldn’t help but wonder what their reactions would be the first time they saw their “new” rooms.   Christ knows us so well and I know that His eager anticipation of our arrival is as strong.

It makes me laugh just a little to think of Him watching my face as I see my new heavenly home one day.  I watched my children’s faces as they entered their rooms for the first time.  But I was waiting to see if they would like the changes and if they would approve of the new look that had been created just for them.

But Jesus knows my heart and He knows my desires even more than I understand them myself.  So as He watches my face when I see my heavenly home for the first time, He won’t be wondering if I’m going to love it….He already knows and is designing that place with my heart in mind.  When he watches my face it will be in delight just to know that I am there with Him forever.