Home

This blog has been in my head for months, but as I live each day, it gets more fleshed out.

Home. What is that?

Home. A place of safety. A place of security. A place to retreat to. A place where you can be. A place where you can cry. A place where love is.

Home. Where is that exactly?

Home. It used to be in Clio, California, next to the river where I could skip rocks and admire the beauty God created all around me. It used to be a house with a fireplace and the security of my dad's presence and the warmth of my mom's cooking and the companionship of my sister and the laughter/fun/carefree-filled weekends with my cousin.

Then home became Riverside, California, where I found out what depth of community was possible in the family of Christ. Home was my apartment with Jenn, where candles always burned and where our friends came in and out constantly for meals or hikes or runs or chats.

For a few short months after that, home was a quad in Virginia. A very new definition of home, but one that was so so sweet and one that could never be replicated. That home was one of total understanding and a bond that will never break.

Then home became Southeast Asia. To be specific, a little coastal overgrown village that contains nothing to attract anyone to. But it was home. Why? Because of the people there. I gained family and community in a whole new way than I had ever experienced. I saw God work in ways that I never would've dreamed.

Now, I find myself in a new home. One a train ride north of that little coastal overgrown village. And I'm trying to find my place. I'm trying to make it feel like home. But I can't. Yes, I have a room that is my own (one that I've yet to hang curtains on the windows or posters on the wall in). But this new city isn't home yet. And what scares me is that it might never feel like home. I don't want it to be like that.

In all of this thinking about home, I've never felt so torn between all these homes. My heart longs to be in Clio with my family. More than I can say. But my heart also would love to be sitting on my red carpet in my apartment on Jurupa with my closest college friends. Or in my quad playing nertz with my Virginia family. Or at home in my little coastal overgrown village with people I've been blessed with beyond my ability to ask Father for.

So, home. What is it? And where is it exactly?

My only conclusion is that home is Abba. Home is fellowship with my Father. He is my home. My citizenship is not in any place on this earth; my citizenship is in heaven. Someday, I will get to go home. Until then, as Katie from Kisses from Katie (a book I highly recommend, P.S.!) says, I'm a nomad on this earth. I love how she puts it: "My heart lives in so many places. With so many people. But God whispers to me that I really have only one home, and that is with Him. I will never be content on this earth. I will always be a nomad. It was meant to be that way. My heart was created with a desire for a home, a nest, a sanctuary, and that can be found only with Him in Heaven. And I will continue bouncing form one home to another, loving with everything I have in whatever location I currently reside, excitedly awaiting the day with I am called heavenward and He says to me, 'Welcome home.'"