Home Sweet Home

The experience of being in Germany gave me a lot to think about and a lot of time to think. I’d say the beginning of my time in Germany could be categorized as the time where I was thinking about the concept of home. What is a home? Is it a group of people? Is it a geographical place? Is it a group of memories from my past? Is home a feeling I have with a certain person? I grappled with these questions and came to a conclusion, (which turned out to be only half of a conclusion because my return to “home” uprooted the pat answer I had). 

As the time in Germany was coming to an end I then began to think about reunions and relationships. I learned relationships can be maintained over a distance, sometimes. Physical presence in a certain season of a relationship is not always necessary, in other stages of relationships it is. The distance and time acted as a sifter, which in the long run was something for which I could be grateful. I was excited to see my family (real family, not a concept here J though I thought about this too), friends and my dog. In my mind I imagined some exuberant reunion where I would feel completely reconnected to my loved ones, where I’d be on the same page with them, like I was before I left. That’s where I began sensing the disillusionment around my idea of reunion, because I didn’t immediately connect with my mother, father or sister (I think my dog and I are still on the same page).

Time had passed, the people, my family, I was looking at were different and I was different too. Our reunion was that not of the same people, celebrating “starting where we left off”, it was a meeting of new people.

This was somehow the second half of my conclusion about “home”. If home is a person or a group of persons, is it still home if the person has changed? Are you further from home if the person is not in character even recognizable?

For this reason the “reconnecting” didn’t happen as fast as I had hoped, if at all. It felt like there was an ocean between us, and, for many months there was. My conclusion (for now) on “reconnecting” is this, it does not happen in a moment but it is reestablished through the beauty of the mundane together. I realized this with my dog, I could only assure him that I wouldn’t leave (without him) again by being there for him day after day. Giving him his food, taking him for his walk, little by little I hope he doesn’t expect me to be gone for so long (we are still researching time perception in animals). The same goes for my close loved ones, our “reconnecting” is a whole new connection; they are not the same, I am not the same. Only as we spend time together, little by little do I discover what they’ve become and can reveal who I’ve turned into (for now).

Through it all I found my answer about “home” in a song the Lord had given me actually right before I left,

“I gave you plans and you broke them in two, and gave me back something more pleasing to you – a heart that could trust through all toils and snares, a heart whose only home could be found home in you.”

From the beginning I had the answer but I was veiled from it’s meaning until I had toiled and came to an untrue conclusion. My heart, my eternal home is in God. If my home was in my family, they would pass away. If my home was a geographical place, it would pass away. But my home is neither of those things, I get to continually make God’s presence my home as I go through my life with Him there, my best friend.

I think today is a great day to stop and make some time to evaluate where you are rooted and where your home is.