Heidi Goehmann

What are the doors like in your house? The front and back doors of my house are painted a jolly white, with six little farmhouse windowpanes in each. If someone knocks on the door, you can easily see who came to visit. There's no straining to see out a peephole or standing on my tippy-toes to assess the identity of an unexpected visitor. The bad part—there's no hiding from anyone either. If you walk near the door to see who it is, your long shadow will fall across the curtains and signify that someone is home. If you tried to crouch down and avoid someone, the sound of your footsteps would be all too obvious. Can you picture me doing this? Squatting down low enough, like I'm playing a game with my two-year-old, hiding from the eye of my visitor?

Every single one of us has something that our spouse does that grates on our last nerve. My husband quietly endures my need to walk around with a book open first thing in the morning; while I get dressed, while I make breakfast, sometimes even while I’m tying my shoes for a run. I also have this absurd need to have someone else fill my water bottle. I simply cannot do it for myself. For whatever reason, I like someone doing it for me. My husband and family answer to my cries of “I need water!” and fill my bottle, sometimes kindly, sometimes begrudgingly. It’s weird, but it’s me, and I’m a work in progress.

We inherited great-grandma Gigi’s giant dining room table. It came complete with four leaves, six chairs, and a tiny dot-to-dot print of a house from my mother-in-law’s craft project gone awry. Our table is a huge blessing to me, not because of the weight of the cherry wood or the pretty carving on each chair. It is a blessing because it allows me to gather my family all in one place, even for just a moment, safe and secure.

I returned home from a conference this week. I left careful instructions for my family—mail two letters that needed to go out immediately, eat up the food in the fridge, don’t watch copious amounts of TV, and attempt to keep the house picked up.

My husband and I have dreams of a tiny house. We binge eat sharp cheddar cheese and green tea into all hours of the night while watching strange tiny house building shows and making plans to squash all four of our children in one tiny loft with our not-tiny dog.

The world is full of ideas. We live with tiny computers in our pockets to call and text and email anyone in the world. There’s a new TED talk weekly on any topic you can imagine. Researchers create new medicines. Artists create new mediums. Companies create new and innovative products.

When we do premarital counseling, my husband and I have a phrase we say over and over again—“Take divorce out of your vocabulary.”

There has been a lot of talk about tattoos in my house lately. No one got a tattoo, nor is anyone getting one in the near future. They have just been the topic of conversation.

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems, and He has a name written that no one knows but Himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which He is called is The Word of God” (Revelation 19:11–13 ESV).