Ever since I’ve been gone, I have thought a lot about home.
Home for me is back in the United States of America, in Illinois, near Chicago. I always just answer the “Where are you from?” question with “Chicago” because although I don’t live downtown, it’s close enough and no one really knows what Illinois is all about anyways.
Home is currently 8,507 miles from me, which isn’t even the farthest it has been in the past 6 months.
I’ve lived there my whole life. I’ve grown up with incredibly good pizza, an incredibly good hockey team, and an incredibly beautiful city. I’ve grown up with cold winters with mass amounts of snow and hot summers with endless days chasing whatever pools I could find. I’ve grown up with the same friends, in the same school. I’ve grown up with the same everything. In the last 19 years of my life, not much has changed.
I think about home often. After all, it has all my favorite things, and all my favorite people.
A question I get a lot is, “Why did you decide to give up everything you known for so long?”
And for a while, I had no idea how to answer that question. I knew what I was doing, but for a while, I was pretty convinced I was not sane.
I would ask myself again and again when people asked me about it: Why would I give up everything I’ve known? Why would I pack a backpack and say “See ya in 9 months!” to the people that I love so dearly. Why would I want to go to a place all the way across the world, and live for 3 months in a place where no one even spoke the same language as me? A place with unfamiliar food, and faces and culture.
But after 6 months, I am finally coming to terms with what leaving truly meant.
Although I was born and raised back in the Windy City, that is not really my home.
Home is where the heart is.
My comfort, my peace, my safety and my heart is with Our Father.
Although I may not understand why He is calling me to places so unknown and so out of my comfort zone, being obedient to His word is what I am called to do.
I understand that places that seem so foreign, aren’t so foreign when you recognize why you are there and who is with you. I understand that everything I am giving up, will be refilled with His joy and His promises.
I left home because I wanted to follow His plan for me. I wanted to go higher and go deeper into what He had to offer me. I wanted to see the world and the people of His kingdom with Him leading me by the hand.
As much as I look forward to getting back to Chicago, my heart is eager to see what The Lord has for me and where He will send me now, and in the future.
Home is wherever the heart is, and my heart is in me and my heart is all for The Lord.
Wherever He calls me, is where I will go.
