We moved into our cute, modern cottage-y house 8 years ago with 2 kids.  Since then, our family has grown to 7.

It’s probably helpful to know our house is 1400 sq ft.

The second floor in our house is a converted loft, which overlooks the kitchen.  Which sounds pretty cool.

Until you notice that half the loft is the kids playroom and the other half is our bedroom.  There’s no doorway, and we can’t put up a dividing wall, because it used to be an attic.  Which means it gets really hot up there during the summer.  Or whenever you use the oven.

So our bedroom is open to the whole house.

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right.

It is so hard to sleep in on Saturday mornings when all the noise from the house drifts upstairs.

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The entryway, living room, and kitchen (no dining room) are all open to each other, and there’s only one bathroom.

Our house is always noisy.

I have no bedroom to escape to, and when I hide in the bathroom, inevitably someone needs to use it.  We homeschool, so we are all home, all the time, on top of each other, all.the.time.

As an INFJ, this is slowly driving me insane.  I have no place that is private or quiet.  It’s a good thing that the housing market is doing fantastic – selling this spring should be a piece of cake!

Americans have an average of 721 square feet per person.  Poor Americans have an average of 439 square feet of living space per person  

I am aware enough to not directly compare my overall situation to the poverty of other Americans, or even other countries.  But, in this instance at least, I fit the definition of poverty.  Add in the fact that our house value has dropped significantly, from a fair price to a steal, and saving for a down payment with 5 kids and 1 income takes time….well, suffice it to say, sometimes I feel poor.

But……………..hope.

Hope inspires me to change my perspective.  If I really believe in redemption, then I need to practice it on my own small scale.  I need to seek it out.  Redemption will not just announce itself out of the blue.  It’s buried treasure that has to be sought, found, and wrestled to the surface.

And isn’t that the point of all this waiting, all this Advent?  We hope, we prepare for Christmas.  We wrestle this expectancy out of our culture’s demands for speed and gratification.  We seek out  those places where we need to hope, where we need to get ready for Christ to come, to break through.

If God is always working, always moving, even in unimaginable circumstances, then he is working here.

If the goal is to thrive in seemingly unthriveable conditions, how do I do that?  How can I, instead of pointing out what’s wrong, find ways to redeem the situation?

How I love the difference between hope and optimism.

Optimism tells me this situation isn’t that bad.  Others have it worse.  At least it’s less house to clean, less toilets to scrub.

Hope lets me admit how hard it is.  How never ending the chaos is.  How having one closet for 7 people sucks.  (Seriously)

But hope tells me that it is possible to thrive in the midst of this.  Hope says I don’t need more square footage to be happy, to have a healthy family.

And hope inspires me to seek ways to find redemption, to find the glimmers of light in the midst.  Hope is not passive wishing.  It is active knowing, rooted in redemption.

And right now, redemption looks like a storage unit, giving us space from all of our stuff, much of it what we need to keep.  (Trust me, at 200 sq. ft. per person, I’ve done the simplifying thing.)

Negativity has said to me, for years, that our local coffee shop closes at 6 pm, too bad, so sad, you don’t get a break or any quietness.

Hope points out that it opens at 6 am, and I can go down for 90 minutes to write in peace and quiet.

“The church exists in death, for if it doesn’t it has no footing in reality; but standing in death the church lives and acts for the future.” – Andrew Root

I don’t know if this is a new trend, or if I’ve just never noticed it before, but people seem awfully eager to throw in Good Friday with Christmas.  We celebrate baby Jesus, but don’t forget, he’s only here to absorb God’s anger.

But I’m not hoping just for salvation by the cross.  I’m hoping for the redemption of Easter.  I’m hoping for love.  For the power of sin broken.  I hope for a better future, a redeemed present for those living now.

With the dawn of redeeming grace

This is bigger than the grace of my personal redemption.  Redemption dawned with Jesus, but it rises through the day with us. We are created in the image of God.  In the image of the Trinity, built for relationship.  We’re made to create, to take care of our neighbors. We were created to be bearers of life in every situation.

Every situation.  Because hope doesn’t depend on square footage.