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.          

You Can't take it with you...or can you?

     After working with Hospice families, I have a strong belief that by focusing more on Heaven, we may put our earthly life in better balance.  It is commonly felt by Hospice workers that people at end of life often have a longing for "Home." What can this mean to those of us who may have many years left to live?  Can we learn something from those who are going before us?

     When I first heard of this talk of Home, or Heaven,  I thought this was something elderly people knew from church language.  Many of us have heard the old hymns that mention phrases such as "angels coming for to carry me home"  I was surprised to discover that people who don't have any faith connections,also mention this aspect of "going home."  Some people even tell you which day they will be "going home," and often they then die on the day that they mentioned.

     Many years ago, after college, I began looking at Biblical scripture as a way to apply to my life in a more direct way.  I was struggling with whether I would stay in the field of Interior Design, or go to seminary.  I happened to find the following scripture:

    
     Don't store up treasure on earth where moth and rust can destroy, or where thieves break in and steal.  Instead lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.
     For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.                        Matthew 6:19-21


     As a agonized over the decision to leave a great job in Atlanta, and move to a new city in North Carolina with no friends or job, I wondered if I was crazy to consider this.  It surely made no sense.  To say I was scared was an understatement.  I really had no idea what I would learn at seminary, or exactly what I would do after that, but I thought about the scripture above.  

     About this same time I returned from a vacation to find that one of the young women in our Bible Study had died in a tragic car accident.  She had been stuck in traffic on the interstate when some machinery had come loose from the truck in front of her and caused her death.  There is of course no way to prepare for something this quick and unexpected.  She was such a peaceful and beautiful young woman, and it caused us all to look at our own lives and how it could have happened to us.

     For me I put the loss of a friend into my own personal decision and looked at the meaning behind the scripture.  The words seemed to be saying that there were some aspects of this life that did go with us to heaven.  To leave a successful job which pleased my parents, and was such a great opportunity, seemed wrong, but I decided to try life in a different way.  Even though I had no idea what the seminary experience would do for me, I felt if I were to die as a young person, I wanted whatever knowledge was there.  If I were to have my life end sooner than we tend to expect, I wanted the growth from seminary to go with me to heaven.  I felt I would grow in ways at seminary, that would create spiritual or eternal treasures.

      Going to seminary did bring opportunities of fulfillment and "riches" that were beyond what I had hoped.  My life has gone in directions I would never have imagined, and by asking God or Spirit to direct me for each step, life has been more than I could have dreamed.  I have chosen the spiritual path.

     Not everyone who chooses to look for God's direction ends up going to seminary to become a minister.  A spiritual path could be someone deciding to leave seminary and go to study Interior Design.  God may take them in an opposite way from where I was to go. I don't know what anyone elses path is to be, I only know that after 25 years of asking God which way to go, I have found riches beyond imagination.  Before if I thought of someone who was rich I had limited images of money, houses, or certain cars.  Now I know that the these don't even compare to what God has in mind.  I guess I now believe that "You can take it with you."  You just have to think about which treasures will "follow us home."    

God Talks Back...

     Although I grew up in a "church going family" in the 60's, we were one of those families who only prayed on special occasions such as at Thanksgiving Dinner.  I sometimes wished that we prayed openly, and thought of an old fashioned picture I had seen of a little girl bowing by her bedside with her hands folded in prayer.  The one time I decided to do this, I shyly knelt by the bed after I had carefully closed my door.  I was embarrassed when my mother opened the door to see what I was up too.  Since we never prayed outside of church, and in our tradition, never on our knees anyway, she sort of smiled, laughed, and closed the door.  That was enough embarrassment for me not to try that again!
    
     Yes, our family was a safe and loving family, but there were a lot of things we were shy about.  The examples I have of the discussions we avoided in our home are God, love, and sex.  We all attended church every Sunday, but at home we never said the word God.  We all cared about each other, but we never said "I love you."  And eventually... we all knew that sex existed, but we sure weren't going to mention that word!
    
     After graduating from the University of Tennessee with a diploma and a pretty typical college experience, I found myself living in Atlanta.  As I decided to get back to my church roots I accidentally stumbled into a church that was much more open about their God experiences.  I began to hear about a God that will actually communicate back to us.  I remember hearing one of the other singles in our church group talk about how her mother was an example of following God's lead.  She told of a time when she was little and her family was moving to a new town   They went to visit the new city and were driving around when her mother looked up at a house in front of them. She suddenly declared to her family in the car, that the house in front of them was the one they were to buy!  I really didn't see the big deal about her saying this, but my friend went on to explain.  She said,  "You don't understand, there wasn't even a For Sale sign in the yard or anything!"  "How", I asked, "How did she know that was the house to buy?"  My friend smiled and said, "God told her!"  I was getting interested at this point and asked what happened next.  My friend smiled and said, "My mother went up to the front door of the house and rang the doorbell."  "After talking with the owner, we ended up buying the house!"  Interestingly to me I remember thinking, "I want to be able to do that!"  It was a simple moment but looking back it was the beginning of a calling to live a life of miracles.   
    
     A year or so after this story was told I ended up being "called" to seminary in North Carolina. It was probably thirty years before I ended up picking out a house to buy because of a "knowing," but it did happen eventually, and I thought back to that young woman and the story of her mom.  Through the years as a minister, a ministers wife, a mental health worker and Hospice counselor, I have had many stories and experiences to learn and experience how God speaks.  I hope to share these with you to bring inspirational encouragement for your own life journey.  Letting God's miracles lead us through life is an amazing and wonderful adventure that is truly unbelievable!

Sincerely,
Nance E.