Where do you go when your spirit is broken? When your heart hurts? When you need to find solace before you are ready to go forth and try again? That place should be home.
I love houses: cottages, Victorian monstrosities, even sprawling mansions. You never really know what is going on behind those lovely, crafted facades. As a child, I liked to speculate on the lives of the people behind the shuttered windows and doors. Maybe if I belonged there, I could have that little odd shaped room on the top floor with all the windows. Maybe I could have a little room by the back garden so I could wake up to bird song and cool morning breezes. I could walk up the stone path and confidently open that red door, knowing that I was home; that I was welcome no matter how well or how badly my day had gone. I would find welcome and comfort in that place.
The Four of Wands reminds us of the importance of home; of the necessity of somewhere where we can belong; somewhere where we are always loved.
I know that I spent most of my life feeling like I just didn't belong. I lived in rooms that didn't reflect who I felt I was; they weren't representative of the inner me. I walked on eggshells whenever I walked through that front door. No matter how much I achieved or what I accomplished, I knew that it wouldn't be enough. I never felt valued or loved.
I took that doubt of my own sense of belonging, of my own value into my adulthood, into the greater part of my life. Nowhere ever felt like home. No matter where I moved or whom I lived with, I never felt like I belonged. My inner self was not reflected into that greater outer world.
Again, I am facing a new move, a relocation from one place to another. I wonder if the new place will feel like home, if it will give me a sense of belonging. Will my inner and my outer worlds align at last?
I've come to realize, however, that home shouldn't be about the four walls around you. It isn't about the furniture or the wallpaper. Home is about love; the love inside you and the love around you.
Find that place in yourself: of acceptance and love. Find the people that can reflect that love back to you, that can magnify and multiply it. Fill the world around you with love; then worry about the color of the wallpaper.
With love, you can always be at home.