WHERE IS HOME?

Where is Home?

     I believe one of the hardest aspects of going into ministry was to give up "home."  I remember a discussion during 9th grade Biology class with my girlfriends about where we would live when we grew up.  (I am afraid I have never been one for math or science so I was very rarely discussing the subject at hand.)  We had a kind teacher and I remember him smiling as he heard our conversation.  I believe it was when he heard me emphatically declare that I would never live in a town larger than my hometown of Oak Ridge Tennessee, which had a population around 30,000. I didn't want to live in a large city like the neighboring city of Knoxville.  I believe it was the last comment that had him smiling.

     Yes, I can smile myself now at my limited views while growing up.  I just knew that I would do like my parents and get married right after college to the young man I would meet there.  Next I would find this other perfect town, build a home as my parents did, and never move again.  You know what they say, never say never. As a matter of fact I would change that to "never, ever, ever, ever... say never!" I have learned it is a sure sign you are about to get the shock of your life!  In my own life I have begun to think of this as a backwards prayer that says "Please God, you know how stupid I am.  Just do the opposite of whatever the stupid statement was that I just proclaimed!"    

     Needless to say I have moved more that I ever imagined. After college I moved to Atlanta, Georgia, without the husband I was supposed to have found.  I am sure young women today can't believe it but I had never even thought about the possibility of being on my own.  On top of that, Atlanta , is just a tiny bit bigger that Oak Ridge or Knoxville put together.  I then moved to Wake Forest, North Carolina to go to seminary where I lived in four different rental places.  After getting married to another minister I lived in four different cities across North Carolina before moving to West Lafayette, Indiana, the home of Purdue University and cornfields.

     Moving can be hard and the first few times I did this it actually caused a year of depression, because I didn't have an established social group.  There was a deep longing to be closer to family, and the fact that I have great in-laws and couldn't be with them either, was just as hard.  There was a time when the scripture below got me through as I felt like leaving home was something I was doing for the sake of my spiritual growth.

     Matthew 8:20
     Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man (referring to himself) has no place to lay his head."
   
      Sometimes hearing the pain of someone else put into words, affirmation of the pain you feel, is helpful.  It meant a lot to hear someone else was hurting because they had no permanent home. I am not trying to compare myself to Jesus, and I guess God finally decided I had learned enough from this moving around, because for the last fifteen years we have been happily settled in one place. (In defense of my 9th grade self, I did land happily in a town that reminds me of the one I grew up in, I just hadn't envisioned the stops in-between.)
     Through these moves over the years,  I came up with a statement that actually brought me peace.  For me, "Everywhere is home, and nowhere is home."   This statement may sound sad to some, but those of us who have come to learn in this way, know there is finally peace.  Home is where I am connecting to people.  Home is where I am at that moment.

     I still struggle with being separated from our extended family, and I can't describe what it was to leave my homeland and home culture.  My mothers family lived in the east Tennessee area since before the revolutionary war.  You can't put words on that kind of history.  The Tennessee/Carolina mountains taught me to feel God's presence through their majesty.  It was only after many years that I learned to see beauty in both the mountains and the "flatlands."

     Everywhere is home, and nowhere is home.  No place, or even my wonderful house with many great memories, is really home.  "Home" is that sense when I am focused on God and feel God's peace, love, and acceptance.  In that moment, I am home.  I guess it get's back to what I learn working with Hospice families.  We don't really have to be scared of physical death.  A part of us, deep inside, knows this place where we will go next.  We will be going, in the truest sense of the word... home.