Precious Possessions…What Matters Most

My family has a reputation…for Nerf wars...INSIDE our home. As many as a couple dozen big kids and several adults armed to the teeth with plastic guns and rubber bullets overtake the better part of our home and for hours, chaos reigns.

It is heaven to me.

Yelling and screaming, peals of laughter, hilarious comebacks and leaps over tables by 200 pound 20 year olds…does life get any better than kids (of all ages) truly enjoying themselves? Joy unspeakable. Reliving those moments over and over again, I realized there is an important point to be made and to remind ourselves of:

All of my “possessions” are seriously at risk during the Nerf war. Our furniture, knickknacks, even David’s framed, signed photo with Reagan…but truthfully, I couldn’t care less. Those possessions pale in comparison to the memories being made, the “big kids” becoming young again and PLAYING with the young ones. The freedom they feel to just BE a kid…no “cool factor” necessary…accepted and loved.

I realized that none of the THINGS in my house matter as much as the children and people who enjoy being in the HOME. Those kids and the memories being made are the most precious possessions we have.

Once upon a time, such raucous was kept outside, but a few years ago, we had a break out…Some of these same kids were over for a movie night. David and I left the room to bring back some popcorn and the couches had become barricades and the custom-made pillows (read: NOT CHEAP) were being tossed at full force toward the opposing team of teenagers. My first inclination was to suggest they take the craziness outside and use any one of the 50 balls purchased for such a purpose.

David wisely stopped me.

“They are having fun…don’t you dare stop them.”

I reasoned with him about the cost of fabric per yard, the cost of labor we paid to have the pillows made, how hard he worked to make the money for those things…

And he said all that was worth nothing if the kids in our house couldn’t enjoy their HOME and have fun…and their friends feeling welcome to come here was priceless. So we hid behind a wall to keep from being hit, and seriously laughed harder than we had in a decade. The pillow war was a game that became commonly played every Saturday night.

Some of those pillows suffered grave injuries…split seams and all, they still grace my sofa. Reminders that it’s not about the house decor, it’s about the heart of a home. A home’s most precious possessions are not the things in it, but the memories that live in the hearts of those who come to call it “home.”