Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Home

I want to go home, I want to go home
I feel so broke up, I want to go home.
So hoist up the John B sail...

We have been in Texas for almost two months now, and boy am I homesick today. These words, penned by a well-known mid-century philosopher, have been running through my head all day. I am ready to hoist the mainsail and set sail for home. (Although it's not the worst trip I've ever been on for sure).

A lot of things are good. We have had numerous confirmations that this is not just the right place for us to be, but also the right time to have come here. I do trust that the same God who started this work will be faithful to complete it by selling our house at the proper time. And living with family has been so blessed by God. We have our moments, but we come together and work them out, and God blesses us with harmony.

But this week it still seems to have hit me hard, out of the seeming blue: I am ready to go home. Time for vacation to be over, to get back to reality. There is just one problem, aside from the obvious that this IS reality and this IS home. I don't know where I would go home TO. We have been so many places, I have lost my sense of where or what Home is.

Before Utah, there was Michigan. Before that, two different parts of California. Before we were married there was Taylor University, which has changed so much in ten years that it doesn't feel like the same place. In fact, the deeper and further I go, I realize that the place that would most seem like Home, is the house we lived in when I was a kid. If I could go anywhere, I would go to my room there, with the big pink flowers all over the walls. I would crawl under the pink-and-white striped cover and curl up into a ball... and just be.

The truth is, I can never go back Home. My parents don't live there; and the pink-and-white striped cover has long since disintegrated, I am sure. I would have to go back to a time, not just a place. In the 1997 movie, “Grosse Pointe Blank,” main character Marty Blank goes home for his 10th high school reunion, only to find out that his childhood home has been torn down and replaced with a convenient store. As he shares with a friend, you can never go home; but I guess you can shop there. I am not the first to experience this impossible desire.

I learn from reading God's word that I am not supposed to feel at home here, or anywhere on the planet, during my lifetime. Peter refers to his fellow believers as foreigners and aliens here (1 Pet 2:11). The faithful listed in the “Faith Hall of Fame” of Hebrews 11 were looking forward to a country they can call their own... They were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. (Heb 11:13-16). Those who follow God's way have given up their citizenship as members of the world, and joined God's kingdom.

While I am not ready to go to that home, a little homesickness serves as a good reminder that I am also looking ahead to a place and a time that I will be home. So it's time to acknowledge that while this may not feel like home at the moment, nothing else would either. To find home here, I need to go to God, curl up in his lap... and just be. I am working on it, and my hope lies in knowing that God knows my situation, and promises to meet my needs. And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus. (Phil 4:19).

I imagine that in another year I will be feeling much more settled here. But in the meantime, I ask those of you who pray, to pray for me, for us, and for the kids as we trudge through the daily adjustments that go along with all the good things that brought this move to reality.

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