About seven months ago I stepped off a plane into America, for the first time in eleven months. At the train station, I sat with my Dr. Pepper in hand (slightly disappointed with the taste) and called my mom. We talked excitedly about my arrival home. I was exhausted after 65 hours of travel, but my heart was happy.
I was trying so hard to get home.
Delay, after delay, I hoped and prayed.
I held onto the hope that eventually, I would make it home.
Eventually all of those hours passed and I arrived in Alton, IL, my hometown. Unfortunately, I never made it home. Home didn’t come when I stepped off the train and hugged my pride and joy. It didn’t come when I moved back to Tulsa and rejoined my community. Not even moving into my own place brought that feeling of home. I left home in July of 2013 and lost it somewhere along the streets of a foreign country.
From living in one room with my whole team, using our tents as rooms, to sharing a two bedroom house with four other girls, home was wherever I laid my head at night. In Cambodia, a lot of us struggled with homesickness. We were given an excellent reminder by our squad leader that our homes in America were not our Promised Land. And more importantly, they hadn’t been great enough for us to stay in the first place.
I didn’t realize I was longing for a place that was unattainable, though I should have. One of my favorite quotes by C.S. Lewis has always deeply resonated with me on this matter. “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” My heart was crying out for something different.
I found a new home resting in Jesus’ arms and nothing measures up to that. As I battled the devil in Cambodia, I turned to Jesus over and over again; I laid in a hammock, sobbing and allowed myself to be wrapped in the Father’s arms. When I lived on a mountain in the Philippines, I spent hours a day with Jesus. It was the healthiest month for me, emotionally and I had no problem guessing why.
Coming back into a world that is defined by striving and straining was hard. It’s still hard. I can still trace the outlines of my new home in my mind, but my spirit has strayed off the path and can’t seem to find its way back.
But I know it will and in the meantime, my spirit will find new paths to that home.
This world is not my home, but it doesn’t mean I can’t bring Heaven to Earth like Jesus envisioned.
“Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
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