Finding Heaven in a One-Bedroom Apartment
/CARISSA PLUTA
Throughout engagement my husband and I dreamed of the home we desired to live in—a cozy little home on a nice plot of land. There would be a garden and some chickens and room for our many children to explore. It would be filled with fresh cut flowers and fresh baked bread, and the kettle would never be cold.
PHOTOGRAPHY: AN ENDLESS PURSUIT
As I write this I am surrounded by piles of moving boxes preparing to move to our third apartment home in three years of marriage (not to mention the countless places we stayed while we couch-surfed for the first three months of our marriage).
We are city-dwellers and renters. We’ve yet to have a yard, and unless the little flower pot on our patio counts, we haven’t had a garden. We don’t live in a permanent residence, and won’t for at least another year or so.
We still occasionally catch ourselves dreaming about that home we envisioned for our family, but whether or not that dream is ever actualized remains to be seen.
The desire for a place that my husband and I can call our own finds its roots in the Garden. God entrusted the care of a place to the first man and woman.
After the Fall, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, and the loss of this place was a reminder of an even greater loss--the loss of unity with God and eternal paradise.
This scene in Genesis teaches a deeper reality contained in the idea of “home.”
Home is a foreshadowing of heaven.
The space you inhabit, big or small, is sacred. And like our first parents, husbands and wives are entrusted with the divine duty of placemaking.
Being made in the image and likeness of the God who made heaven and earth, we are called to be “co-creators” of a little Heaven.
Whether you find yourself in your forever home, a small studio apartment, or a spare room at your in-laws’ house, you are called to cultivate a place of beauty and communion.
Our tiny, one-bedroom apartments have each been filled with just as much life as the farmhouse we once dreamt of.
Between Bible studies and dinner parties, Sunday morning breakfasts and afternoon tea, the lives of so many people have intersected in our little living spaces.
They are often filled with fresh flowers and fresh bread, and usually bursting at the seams with music and laughter.
In them, we have encountered God and his immense love for us, and facilitated that encounter for others.
Even amid changes and transitions, trials and hardships, the little home we created together serves as a constant, unchanging reminder of our eternal home.
