Home. It’s a concept I’ve been wrestling with for the past two years. But if we’re being honest, maybe it’s something I’ve been trying to understand for most of my life.
When I was going into 5th grade, my family moved – not too far away, just a couple hours drive, but enough to have to move into a new house and a new school and leave all my friends behind. Being the dramatic pre-teen, I swore I would never call that new house home. All these years later, when I think of home, I think of those creaky wood floors and the smell of citrus wafting through the backyard of that San Diego home that we moved into. That’s a place I go in my mind when I think of home. But you know what else? The one lifelong friend who stayed in touch, even when we moved, and even though we were so young, when I hear her laugh, that’s home too. And I get to see that little piece of home get married this month.
The main reasons I’ve wrestled with home for the past couple years specifically has to do with a couple big things. About five years ago, after graduating college, I said goodbye to my San Diego home and the warm family that knows me and loves me, and set out on a grand adventure: moving to Asia for what was supposed to be two years. Well, two years became three, and I found my husband and ultimately another home overseas. We wanted to live there forever, loving the people and inviting them into the Kingdom. But covid had other ideas – we had to evacuate and have never been able to return. So, we came back to the states abruptly, and in the same year, we had to say goodbye to one of the pillars of my San Diego home: my grandmother.
I felt like home was crumbling all around me.
“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens…So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5: 1, 6-8 ESV)
Why do we feel such a strong pull towards the things that feel like home? Because God created us for Home: He created us for Himself, for His kingdom! He longs for us to desire to be with Him, to dwell with Him. He created us to yearn for belonging and being known somewhere and to someone. He created us for Himself, for His great kingdom.
So when I start to feel discouraged about my home being a house that doesn’t satisfy, or when we are uprooted and have to begin again, or when we have to say goodbye to something or someone we thought would always be there, I hold on to the gifts of home on Earth, whatever those things may be. Even more, I hold on to the hope of an eternal home that He is calling me to.
There’s a song by Drew and Ellie Holcomb called “Feels like Home” where they describe the things that feel like home to them. For me…
Smelling my husband’s shirt as I do the laundry
Hearing some of my dearest friends’ voices or laughter, whether in person or on the phone
Eating dumplings and drinking hot water, or catching a whiff of incense
Smelling citrus wafting through the air
Listening to the ocean, anywhere in the world, and looking for shells that I think my grandma would like
These things all feel like home.
But even more, dreaming of gardening alongside the Lord, in an eternal home that He is preparing that will never pass away, that we will never have to leave or let go of – that is home. We worship a God that wants to be at home with us forever. And He is inviting each person to join Him there. Hallelujah to Him who is Home.
“I’m asking God for one thing, only one thing: to live with him in his house my whole life long.” (Psalm 27:4a The Message)
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