This space we live in has become quite normal, quite ordinary to me. The daily routine has become more of a drudge as I know that each day just brings more dishes, more errands, more of the same lessons to be taught to children who seem to have forgotten them from just 24 hours prior.

I love my children, my husband, my home, my God. I’ve just been stuck in an ordinary mindset.

The home, however, is no ordinary place. It has only become that way in my mind because of MY perspective.

Five years ago called me home – to be in this place, raising our children, making a home. It was something I wanted with all my heart, but it was also scary at the time. I didn’t realize how comfortable I had become in the working world. I wasn’t the best housekeeper. I didn’t do a lot of “homemade.” And suddenly, my two children would be with me, relying on me, needing me every moment of every day.

In all that comes with raising children over the past five years, I had forgotten that God CALLED me home. It was clear as a bell during a worship service while I was pregnant with Little J. We were planning a move as The Hubby had been accepted to medical school. I had resigned my teaching position and been applying for part-time elementary music jobs in the community we thought we would end up in. That was MY plan, but God told me differently. He called me home.

And we listened. Even though it made no sense financially, I became a stay-at-home mom and that’s what I’ve been ever since.

The stay-at-home mom part is not easy to forget – it’s what I do. But the calling…how could I forget that?

That calling is important. Essential. Purpose-giving. Holy.

And that last word is the word that caught me the other day as I read about Joshua and the angel in one of the last few chapters of Bob Goff’s book, Love Does.

The angel told them to take off their shoes because they were on holy ground, just as we are today.

Have you ever thought of the ground you’re walking on right now as holy ground? That floor covered in crushed Cheerios and the always-dangerous Legos? I can guarantee I had not thought of those played-on, stomped-on, crawled-on floors as holy for a long time…or ever.

Our homes are holy ground because family is a high calling. My friend Lisa-Jo Baker, writing about motherhood, said…

I am convinced that the God who made you, sculpted you, loved you into being considers your story just as important as the work of rescuing women from the slums in Kenya or the traffickers in Ukraine.

And that story is worth fighting for, right? Joshua was on his way to a fight when he encountered that angel and took his shoes off. Our homes, our families, our stories deserve to be more than just ordinary and we must fight to make them so. I want to do what Bob Goff says:

I need to pick the fight myself…Then, most important of all, I need to run barefoot toward it. But I want to go barefoot because it’s holy ground; I want to be running because time is short and none of us has as much runway as we think we do; and I want it to be a fight because that’s where we can make a difference. That’s what love does.

You don’t need to be a stay-at-home mom to consider your home holy ground. If you’re a parent, wherever you walk with your kids, for your kids, because of your kids – that is holy ground.

I’ve been taking off my shoes and socks a lot more at home lately to remind myself of the holy God who wants to inhabit our home and hearts. I feel closer. It all feels a lot less ordinary. It’s not easier, but it feels like it’s worth leaning in and kneeling down and fighting hard.

And I couldn’t have said it any better than Lisa-Jo to every parent to wrap it all up neatly:

I believe your work is holy ground and I am proud to stand here barefoot beside you.

Let’s walk barefoot together with God and our family and one another on this holy ground – wherever you are. And let’s fight for more than just the ordinary.