Peaceful Living, A Frame of Mind

"That's a big house out there," the furnace repair man said to my back as he stood in the doorway waiting for the blower motor replacement to arrive. I turned away from my computer to face him so as not to be rude. "You're not gonna know what to do with yerselves once you get in there."

I nodded. "You're probably right." I turned back around to my computer, but he continued.

"Yup. I once built a big two-story house out in the woods, expecting to have kids. We didn't have any, so I sold it."

Seeing he was bored and wanted to talk, I turned back around.

"We bought land and built a house with the same dimensions, only a one story. Then we ended up adopting twins." He laughed, and looked like he expected me to look surprised like he'd built a tiny cottage and didn't have room for kids. I wasn't impressed, but he now had my full attention. I wondered how big that second house really was.

"We didn't have room anywhere," he said. "Once they got to be teenagers, it was hard. They'd come in and drop their sports stuff everywhere."

"How big was your second house?" I asked, curious how it compared to our mobile home. "Do you know how many square feet it was?"

He thought for a minute. "About 2,500 square feet."

It was bigger than my house growing up, and I had thought that was huge. His first house must have been monstrous. "Really? Ours here is about 832 square feet." His eyes grew wide as he looked at the two of my six kids who were home with me. "I have four other kids at school."

He suddenly looked embarrassed, even sheepish. "I like big open space," he said to explain himself.

I hadn't meant to puncture his bubble, but four people in 2,500 square feet just isn't crowded. The only explanation to his belief that he had been crowded came out in his admission at the end: He wanted more than he needed.

Such is the mindset of typical Westerners, myself included. We think that to be happy we need more and bigger. It simply isn't so. Our family life these past two plus years here in this small trailer is proof.

Peacful living is a frame of mind that happens in the small space between the ears, not the square footage between house walls.