How Much Room

Frequently these days I look at the pictures from our life together and also of pictures of my new life without her, but it is humorous because one thing Marsha always wanted of me was to remember to take pictures and I never did. This picture is of Hoi Ling Man Po one of the people God sent to live in our home with us. From 1979 onward Marsha and I seemed to be living a life to make room for others. First it was Camp Dennen where we tried to make old cabins feel like they were possible for a vacation weekend or week, and also create campsites out of woods that were thickly overgrown with briars and other underbrush. For us it was clearly God who then asked us to open our home to strangers or at the very least people we did not know well and make them part of our family for a time. Each time, no matter how much we knew it was what God wanted, we had to change our lives to include someone new. One time it was a whole family and it was for quite a long period of time. It has probably been close to thirty years since we lived this long without someone in our home. How much room does it take to do what we did? How much room do you have in your heart? Each time we let someone into our home we let them in our hearts. I can see the faces today of all the many who have traveled that path into my heart and I still care about every one of them. Some I haven't seen in years and may never see again, but we wanted nothing but the best for them and I still do. For me I think God used this to do a Grinchotomy on me. He expanded my heart like he thawed the Grinch heart, and I am so blessed by that.