Women love their homes. God gave each of us a nesting instinct, which translates to arranging our space to reflect our personalities and become a nourishing place.

For example, some of us love bright colors, others like muted ones. Some like formal, some informal. Some like a cleaned-off look, while others prefer something interesting on every square inch. We enjoy choosing what to display in our homes, and we like the process of putting it all together.

I remember reading the story of a family who moved virtually every year. As soon as the moving van had unloaded and pulled away, the mother picked flowers from nearby plantings (even if they were just wild flowers or weeds) and made an arrangement for the kitchen counter. To her it meant, “We’re home.”

If we women are able to choose new paint, new carpeting or new curtains, we get an extra boost. To have a freshened-up house is to feel fresh ourselves.

Here in my Michigan cottage it’s been a traumatic year, a year I hope never to repeat with its anguish and upset. Although the house was needy when we bought it a decade ago, we used it only sporadically for nine years and did nothing to improve it. We gathered there for the relationships and the beach, and taking time to fix up a run-down place wasn’t our priority.

But when Nate and I moved here full-time last summer, we walked through the house together and made a dream list of home improvements, from fresh paint to a remodeled kitchen (and a dishwasher!), new windows to replace those that were rotting, new flooring, landscaping, a shower someplace other than the basement, and many other things. But when cancer engulfed us, the wish list was set aside.

Then somewhere during the dark of winter, a few weeks after Nate’s death when the world was icy cold, Mary thought it would refresh my wilted spirit to redecorate a room. “Let’s paint the ‘library’!” she said, trying to generate the enthusiasm for both of us.

In a “regular” year, I would’ve jumped at the chance to work together on such a project. But this winter found me disturbed to the core. To add additional disturbance by removing books from shelves and making the compulsory mess to paint a room was completely debilitating. It actually made me cry.

This week, eight months later, the idea sounded better. We began with fresh ceiling paint and have decided not to stop with one room but to freshen up five. God is steadily, slowly bringing healing. I’ve been trusting him to do that all along, and today the smell of wet paint was a fresh fragrance indeed.

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19)