A House and a Home

Yesterday, I attended a planning meeting with the Space Coast Paratroopers Association regarding the joint effort with the city of Palm Bay in the Homes for Warriors program. This got me thinking about houses, homes, and the difference between the two. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a house as “a building that serves as living quarters for one or a few families.” While similar in nature, the definition of a home is different. When I think of the word “house” I think of a building with windows and doors where people live. When I think of the word “home” my thoughts focus on something less tangible. Yes, the house where I reside is my home and it is a very tangible thing, but the building isn’t what makes it a home. Home is somewhere where I feel comfortable. I can be myself. A home is full of love. Being with family is part of what makes it a home – not to say that a person who is single, has no children, or other relatives can’t have a “home”, but not all family is biological, and not even always human (pets can be part of the family too). Before moving back to Florida, “going home” meant that I got to spend time with my family.

Another part of “home” is not just the house, but the city or area. When we went away to college, I never said “I’m going to Palm Bay for the weekend.” It was always “I’m going home.” It was the same way after Justin and I got married and we lived in Georgia, Germany, and Maryland. Yes, we had a place where we resided at the various duty stations, that held all of our belongings, but Palm Bay, FL was always home. Georgia came pretty close to feeling like home, but we knew our time there was temporary and it’s hard to get too attached to somewhere when you know that you’ll be moving, and the more attached you become, the more difficult moving will be. Among Army families, I’ve often heard the phrase “home is where the Army sends us”. I never quite felt that way. Yes, my home is whatever place Justin, Corey, and I are together, but some of the places we lived, I just had a hard time feeling “at home” in. After living so close to D.C. for 18 months, I fully realized that I am definitely not a big city girl. I will never feel comfortable or at home with so many people, so much traffic, and such a fast paced place. It’s just not who I am, and that’s fine. Not everyone is meant for big city life.

One more type of “home” for me is my church home. Other than 3 ½ years when I was away at college, I regularly attended and was involved in the same church from the time I was 5 or 6 years old until I was nearly 25 and moved due to marrying Justin and living where he was stationed. In the years that I was in college and the years since Justin and I got married, I have visited many churches and have regularly attended several. When we were looking for a church in Georgia after moving back from Germany, we visited several and none of them were quite what we were looking for. Both Justin and I both wanted to find something like our home church in Palm Bay. We were getting discouraged, but at the suggestion of a friend, we tried one more. We walked in the door, and it felt like home. No, “feeling like home” wasn’t a main qualification, but we were also pleased with the quality of the preaching, the music in the service, and the children’s programs that the church offered. There was even a small orchestra which got me excited because I had really missed playing my saxophone when we were in Germany. That became our church home away from home, and I am thankful for that. Now we’re back in Palm Bay and back at our home church. There are a lot of new faces, but also a lot of familiar ones that I’ve known most of my life. In many ways, it feels like we never left. It still feels like home, and the people of the church still feel like my family. It makes me so happy to watch my son as he now can grow up in the same place as I grew up surrounded by some of the same loving people who have known me since I was his age, and plenty of others who I’ve come to know over the years since then.

On the day that Justin was injured, aside from my concern as to his welfare, I had a million other things running through my head. The Army does a lot to prepare soldiers and families for reintegration after a deployment and arrangements and standard protocol should death occur. There is basically nothing explained regarding severe injury. One of my big concerns would be where we would go (after Walter Reed…which I also was unaware of how long that would be) and what we would do. I figured that with losing his legs, Justin wouldn’t be able to stay in the Army, so without the only career he’s really known since he was a teenager, what would happen next for our family? While the immediate questions were answered and the timeline at Walter Reed a lot longer than I’d originally thought, things weren’t quite as pressing, but those concerns still lingered in the back of my mind. Then came the first time we went back to our rental house in Georgia with Justin in a wheelchair. That experience brought up a whole new list of concerns. Finding just any house or apartment wouldn’t work. We would need something accessible which our rental house was far from. Things we had never even thought about (like bathroom doorways being narrower than bedroom doorways) were now something we had to work around. Matthew 6:25-30 says, ““Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” I knew that God had a plan and that he would take care of us, but having the knowledge of that and being able to hand those concerns over to Him without taking them back to worry on them some more is a lot easier to say than do.

About 8 months after Justin was injured, we received a series calls that changed everything for us. After Justin was injured, his aunt, Michelle, agreed to be the contact person if people contacted the local newspaper (which had run a few articles about our situation) wanting to get ahold of us or pass along information or encouragement. She called us and told us that our local congressman’s assistant had called her wanting to know if we wanted a house in Palm Bay – our hometown. We told her we were interested and got a call from the congressman’s assistant who gave our information to the people with the city. Then we got a call from Bob with the city of Palm Bay explaining things. The city had acquired some foreclosed houses and they wanted to give one to us mortgage free. I expressed my concerns regarding Justin’s accessibility needs and Bob told me that all the house would need to be fixed up and that the city would make it accessible in the process before handing over the keys to us. Wow. I’m still in awe over how everything just seemed to fall into place. Talk about an answer to prayers I hadn’t even thought to pray. At that point, I was praying that God would heal Justin’s legs so that he could walk. I was praying for short-term things and thinking too far ahead was scary, so I tried not to think about it. I figured we would end up putting our stuff in storage and staying with family for a bit once we were done at Walter Reed. We’d have to find the right house and use Justin’s VA loan to buy it, then use the VA grant to get it adapted, but then there were the concerns regarding how to pay the mortgage. God had bigger and better plans than I had even considered.

So, what does this house mean to me and my family? Having a mortgage free house is a huge financial weight off of our shoulders. Accessibility is also a huge deal. It’s not just a matter of convenience, but it’s a safety issue for Justin as well. At our rental house in Georgia, Justin’s wheelchair couldn’t fit through the bathroom doorways, so we had to put a rolling computer chair in the bathroom. He would transfer from the wheelchair to the computer chair (which didn’t have any sort of brakes). This was a scary process at times. He didn’t fall, but he came close a few times. Once on the computer chair, he would use the counter to roll himself to the toilet (which didn’t have any grab bars, so transferring to and from the toilet and computer chair was sketchy). If he took a bath or shower, once again, the transferring to/from the computer chair was an issue. We made do during the brief times we were there, but having a house to come home to where he doesn’t have to make do make his life, and in result my life, much easier. The house has helped us get back into our community. We’ve reconnected with friends and spent time with family in our house. For our son, for the first time in his life, he lives near his grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and two of his cousins. He’s able to have stability in his life, and he’s thriving. He’s had friends over to our house to play and makes plans with various family members. What does this house mean? It means we’ve come home, and we’ve been enjoying every day of being home.

The house for us was the inspiration for the Homes for Warriors program. They’ve already presented two other houses to wounded veterans and their families, and there are more in the works. Not all veterans (wounded or not) have the same kind of community, family, and church support that our family has. I’m so proud of the city of Palm Bay and all the businesses and volunteers who have shown such support for my family and other wounded veterans. I’m excited for the future Homes for Warriors recipients that they will soon have forever homes. Most of them aren’t originally from Palm Bay, so they will be making a new home for their families. I hope they love it and feel as welcome as our family does.

If you live in the Palm Bay, FL area, please consider being a part of this wonderful program and help welcome these wounded veterans to their new homes. Check out and “like” the Space Coast Paratroopers Association page as they post updates on volunteer and donation opportunities.
https://www.facebook.com/SpaceCoastParatroopersAssociation?ref=br_tf