Home is...

            A few weeks ago, I celebrated the nine-year anniversary of my ordination as a pastor. Nine years ago August 22 I took vows that moved me from being a member of a local church to being a member of a presbytery. A week later, I moved to Illinois for my first pastoral call. That whole week is kind of a blur for me because so much changed. August 22 I was ordained. August 23, we had to put my dog, Mikey, down and I didn’t think I would ever stop crying, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time to mourn because three days later there was a U-haul in the driveway and we were filling it to move me to the Midwest. I tried to figure out how I would make a home there. A friend of mine sent me to Illinois with a going-away card with a frowning stick figure on the front and a caption that said, “Too sad to swing.” How was I going to make a home there?

            I lived in a two-bedroom apartment, my first place that was my space. Two years later, a cat adopted me and I moved out of the apartment into a rental house where I was allowed to have a cat. I was still trying to figure out home, especially with a significant other and all of my family living 15 hours away. I read the passage in the bible, from the book of Jeremiah, a prophet who was sent by God to serve God in a strange land far away from home, and he taught the people to bloom where they were planted: strive for the welfare of the city where you live. I heard that home is where the heart is, but my heart was in New Jersey. Even when I really felt at home in my life in Illinois, David still wasn’t there.

            So I moved. Seven years into my call, the call came to an end, David and I got engaged and I moved to his apartment in New Jersey where I could only unpack about a third of my boxes because we just didn’t know how long we’d stay in the apartment. This was the apartment where David had lived for 10 years prior to me moving in, and quite honestly, I didn’t want to stay there forever. It was his place. Then I got the call to my current church in eastern PA. We bought a house and I packed up what I’d unpacked so I could move again. This feeling of transience – I’m not so much a fan. We bought the house we bought because we wanted something that would be like a forever-home – the kind of place you can live in for the rest of your lives, raise a family in, and not move again. We moved into the house and I started my call here and it finally finally feels like I’m no longer transient. I am home.

            Home is such an interesting concept. I don't know how some are able to move around so much so easily. I think of military families who have moved around a lot. Maybe your parents got the kind of job that moved you around a lot as a kid, or maybe you have that kind of job now. I think technology has made moving around a little bit less-involved, because you can do a lot of work remotely now. Anyone moved more than 10 times? More than 15? How many times? When someone asks you where home is, what do you say?

            For the first 26 years of my life, home was in my parent’s house. For the first two years of my life, we lived in a trailer home together (which I don’t remember at all at this point) and as the family expanded to welcome my brother, we moved to the house where my parents still live today. Sometimes when I turn on my GPS to take me to my parent’s house I still accidentally say, “Take me home” because my home was in New Jersey for 24 years. When my parents changed the locks a year ago, I almost cried when I took the key off my key ring that has been on my key ring since I was in the sixth grade.

            Home. What is home?

            In Hebrews 11, the writer talks about faith and lifts up these heroes of faith – Abraham, Enoch, Abel, Noah, Jacob…all these people who lived by faith and not by sight. “All of these died in faith without having received the promises but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had an opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:13-16a). In their song Where I Belong, the band Building 429 sings, “All I know is I’m not home yet. This is not where I belong. Take this world and give me Jesus. This is not where I belong.”

            The idea of this life being transient – of living with the knowledge that home isn’t ever attainable in this life – is something that I’ve wrestled with. Given my desire to feel like I’m finally home, the notion that “this is not where I belong” is not a line I want to sing. But in the moments when I do feel transient, or when I’m wondering if I’ll ever feel settled, it’s comforting to know that my real home is with God. That’s home. And by praying in the Lord’s Prayer for things to be “on earth as they are in heaven,” I’m asking God to make me feel like I am home wherever I am as long as I’m within God.

            And honestly, I don’t feel transient now. I still get a weird itchy feeling when I see too many boxes because it reminds me of those transient feelings, but I feel at home where I am now. I am with my husband. I am near my family and I’m serving a church that I love. I feel like God has led me here and I know that I abide in the love of God, so I can bloom where I’m planted. I know that one day I’ll have to move again – a two-story house is not a forever home when you think about aging issues in the (hopefully) distant future, but for now, I’m content where I am. I’m content to say I am home, even as I live into my faith journey towards my heavenly home. Life is good.  :) 

What does home mean to you? Share your thoughts about home in the comment section!

Wood carving someone made for me at a church where I served as temporary supply for three months in between calls. It was a beautiful reminder in my struggle to define "home."