Home has always been a tricky thing for me.
I remember sitting on the couch in my home in Pearl River, New York flipping through photo albums, asking questions at every turn. My favorite dinner time consisted of taking my shoes off, eating on the floor with my right hand at the cultural meals at Dad’s work. As I grew older, I found myself packing in a bag and one sister telling me it was from Guatemala while the other is sure it was from Kenya. I delighted in the stories I could tell people about my family and their time in Kenya, or how my Nana loves to host missionaries, or how Christmas traditions in my family consist of tamales and conversations about who enjoys Flan and who doesn’t. But my feet stayed planted. “I’m a missionary kid…sort of…half.” Became my strategically planned answer as I hoped that they wouldn’t ask any more questions, so they wouldn’t find out I’m a fake. I turned around never feeling quite at home where my feet found themselves. Home became more than just a place for me, but something I could still never define. It was my family yes, but it was also Kenya in an odd way. But it couldn’t be Kenya, right? Home was blurred in my mind as I begged my parents to let me stay in Newnan, Georgia when they moved to Lynchburg, Virginia over the summer. Sitting by myself in a hammock at my favorite lake and thinking to myself, “I’ve stayed too long. Newnan is not home.” I set up my tent and home became a campsite paired with a porta-potty, but it still was blurred. Writing on my customs form to get into the DR that home was an address of my squad mentor in Gainesville because I couldn’t remember my new one. I walked through the streets of Costa Rica for the first time and my heart breathed a breath of fresh air. “I’m home.” 3 months of feeling more at home than I’ve ever felt in my life, I tearfully left another home. After what felt like being ripped away, I settled into the Dominican Republic and found myself almost guilty for throwing the label around so easily.
It isn’t easy. To feel the most at home in Costa Rica but always sticking out because you look in the mirror and see a tall, blonde girl. Or to go home and look like everyone else, but feel like a piece of you is gone because you can understand everyone around you all the time.
What an honor and privilege to watch the Lord turn what hurt to home. He has walked and is walking me through what it looks like to wake up in a bed, in a tent, in the US, in the DR and know I’m home. The core question of much of my life has remained this, “Where is home?” After 9 months of calling many places home, you’d think the question would only burn more. Instead, I sit on the other side and can say that yes, the grass is greener on the other side. Because home is Heaven.
Every good thing, every African meal I ate, every page I journaled in my tent, every walk to the beach in Costa Rica, and every taxi ride in the DR, is actually just a reflection of heaven. of a Father who has my home, the home, waiting for me. Theres layers to this. Obviously, I long for a physical home and roots to put down, but I’m also reminded that this longing is not exclusive to Missionary kids. This longing is a bigger longing, one for heaven. I’m amazed at the amount of times the Lord has clearly spelled it out for me in scriptures and I’ve simply missed it.
Hebrews 11: 16 “…. Instead, they were longing for a better country — a heavenly once…”
Hebrews 13:14 “for here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”
2 Corinthians 5:4 “for we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, and eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothes instead with our heavenly dwelling.”
Philippians 1: 22 “if I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet which shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”
Philippians 3:20 “but our citizenship is in heaven…”
Now, I think I’m glad I don’t have a home. I think the Lord has blessed me with this, that I may willfully go where He calls (acts 4!!) Praise the Lord for a longing as pure as this. A longing for a Father, best friend, brother, Comforter, Protector, Defender, Lover. Actually, its a blessing to long for a home like that! So, I call many places home. Praise the Lord for the fact that I don’t feel at home here on Earth. Praise the Lord that I can long for a home and still serve the Lord and shout His name when I’m in the temporary home He’s given me.
In the end, I will go home in 25 days to a new home. I will feel pretty broken, because I left another home. But whoa, praise the Lord that my real Home, Jesus, is always going before, beside, and behind me.
turns out, the grass is greener on the other side.
