Home

Home is a strange word, full of meaning as well as mystery

I mean what is it really that makes a place feel like home...

I've lived a lot of places, and though some closer than others, none were ever completely on the mark...

Some say 'home is where your heart is'... and to this I might have said, at some point or another in my life, 'than mine is lost'...

Home has always been a fairy-tale idea to me... too good to be true... and rightly so I guess...

Some say, as a christian, 'the earth is not our home'.

I know this to be true. In certain ways. I mean we certainly can't stay here. The span of a life is only so long, and for most it is much shorter than what we hope for. But also in the fact that there is somewhere else altogether in which we do belong. Heaven is our true home, and this world will only disappoint us.

Many times in my life I have buckled under the weight of this, even before I could name it... I've felt the aching, the burning within me, the discontent and elusive satisfaction, the sense that all is not quite right, the feeling that there really is more to life than this, than meets the eye. The longing to belong, the homesickness even in familiar and worn in places, all bearing testimony to the fact that there is a higher reality, a truer existence, a place beyond the sea and stars, a life hereafter...

And I've reached a conclusion, after a million times of getting what I thought I wanted and finding once again, every time, that it too was not enough... and in knowing that I will always want more... There really is no sure satiation in this life, not within the boundaries of this world anyway, that is, except for when that which is Above and Beyond, He who is outside time and space, the Forever One, reaches in and draws us into Him... we who are not whole apart from He who hath made us... then and only then can we truly know home... Now we only have broken peices...

My mind races...

Even with this awareness, I still have moments of disillusionment so to speak... where I catch glimpses, or I seem to find something almost close enough

My husband said to me once, that even our very first kiss, to him felt like home... that I myself am home to him... that was my first glimpse

Last night I had another one of these moments. It was almost magical. Though it was long night and mostly spent in a car, the moment I stepped out of that car, and onto the street outside the door of the house in which I have been living and yet away from for some time now, the minute I stretched my limbs and breathed the air, rich with the blissful scents of warmth and beauty, of early summer sweetness... "jasmine" I sighed... and flowers with names I knew not... Oh in that moment I was in love... I wanted to swim in it... such peace and ecstacy. I felt relief... I felt home

It has been a long journey... in many ways... not just this last 2 weeks of unnexpected awayness... but my whole life I have felt like I will never quite belong anywhere... and though I know I do not quite belong here, I've never felt so happy to be somewhere... I've never felt so happy to call a place home

Maybe it was because we were gone for so much longer than we had planned, and all the unforseen delays, and the seemingly endless extentions made me miss our new house all the more. Maybe it was because I knew I'd be leaving soon again, and I just got caught in the sentiment. Or maybe it's that I now have a family. Familiars and familiarity. A group of people that I love to be with and are dear to me... for once I am starting to feel like I really could get used to being somewhere... if only all the rest of the people that I love so dearly could live here too... though the here might not be the important part...


It's funny though... cuz as I think about it I am remembering that even in the times that I have called a place home, it has always been the road that has called me with the most passion, the most desire, the most sense of where I need to be... and while I still long to travel and see the world, more and more I can't help but crave and need a space of solidity and comfort, but mostly community and kinship.

They say pregnancy can change a person... some refer to it as the nesting stage...

I can't say that I ever felt I really understood or even related to this untill last night...

And yet, last night I was also overcome by the realization, that although this is quite possibly the closest I have ever felt in all my life to the home I've always longed for and never felt sure I'd ever reach, the truth still is, I am not there yet...