Something unexpected happened to me early on during the Race. It was month two of our year long adventure and I was riding in the back of a cattle truck, wedged in among my teammates. We were coming home from a long day spent walking the streets of tiny villages surrounding the small town of Chinandega, Nicaragua. The sun was laying low in the sky, hovering, as if hanging on, trying to offer a few moments more of golden light before calling it a day.
Instead of sitting on the wooden benches flanking either side of our truck-bed alongside my friends, I opted to climb up a few rungs of the truck’s railings. I stood, arms folded in front of me, clutching the top rail while setting sunbeams cast golden flecks into the wind that danced in a comforting constant on my face. I closed my eyes and smiled softly as the sounds of Coldplay’s, “Every teardrop is a Waterfall” filled my earbuds.
You know the iconic scene in Titanic, where Rose and Jack stand at the bow of the ship together? Rose closes her eyes and steps up, placing her feet on either side of the railing as Jack steadies her from behind, Rose smiles and says, “I’m flying, Jack! I’m flying!” — my moment on this truck was exactly like Rose’s moment on the bow of the Titanic. Exactly. Just, without the Jack, or the ship, or the tragically terrible ending, plus Chris Martin. Otherwise, Rose and I have totally shared an experience.
If I close my eyes now, as I write this, I remember how the moment felt.
Peace filled my spirit. The open air smelled of dirt and trees and expansive clear sky as we drove rugged, rural roads. My mind was clear and my soul was hopeful. That’s when it happened; when things shifted in my spirit.
As I talked to God on the back of that truck, I was hit with a desire for home. Not a desire to be back in my childhood home of Augusta, Maine, and not a desire to be back in the home of my 20’s, tucked on the outskirts of Boston. It wasn’t even a desire to be back in the United States, really. This was something different. It was a deep desire to build home — to create space, to set down roots, to grow family and cultivate community. This was a desire to craft something that did not yet exist, in a place I didn’t know.
For a girl who who has spent the last six-or-so years living in restlessness, kicking back against permanence, this desire to settle somewhere is a big deal. This is foreign land, my friends.
And here’s what made it even more foreign; as I stood stunned at this new desire rising up in my heart, watching landscapes of villages and scattered houses racing past me, another assurance surfaced, “This isn’t what it’s going to look like. The home we’ll build won’t look like this.” Sorry, what? But, this landscape kind of looks like my memories of East Africa, and I’ve been hoping—like really hoping, for like, a really long time—that the landscape of Kenya is what home would become. I thought that was what I wanted—the opposite of the “American Dream” stuff, you know? On the back of a truck in Nicaragua, a tide changed, and the Lord began to recraft my heart’s feelings towards Western culture. As the months have gone on, what I once saw through a lens of disdain and frustration, I am beginning to see as an area of influence and opportunity for the Kingdom.
So, in August I stepped off a plane at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, after a year of finding home in 11 other countries, with a new desire to settle-in somewhere. But, instead of feeling more settled in the U.S.—you know, after getting all the traveling out of my system before I begin my “real life”—when I landed I felt confused and more torn than when I left. It became clear in the first few weeks of being stateside that I no longer know where I fit.
Was home in Maine? Was home in Boston? Was home in Kiziracombe, Rwanda, or Antigua, Guatemala, or somewhere in Southeast Asia? Okay, probably not anywhere in Southeast Asia…
My plane has landed, but my heart is still in flight, still searching for the place that will feel like home. I’m searching for the place where the building will begin and this unsettledness will quiet down a little, knowing we’ve arrived where we’re supposed to be. And that, has lead me to a hard place of deep wrestling over these last few months…
“Will there ever be a place that feels like home, Abba?”
I ask and wait for an answer. But you know what? I’m still not sure what He’s saying about that.
Instead of answers I just have more questions, right now. I wonder if I feel so unsteady because my foundation isn’t as firm as I once thought? Am I placing too much hope in building a physical home in a physical place when, if my roots were truly deep down in Jesus, I would walk in freedom and confidence knowing my home is always in Him, no matter the geographical coordinates? My head tells me the answer to that one is, “YES. Duh.” but, it’s a hard thing to know deep in your spirit sometimes. So here we are, with a desire to build home, to set down roots, to have permanence, but with the where and the when unknown.
I feel like I’m living in-between; between what was and what’s to come. I’ve been given a new promise by God, that the building is coming, but not just yet. We have to wait.
As I search the Scripture for answers and comfort, I’ve gotten hung up on a moment in the book of John, where Jesus walks by two men who will soon become His friends and followers. The men have heard stories about Jesus, so they trail behind Him, curious and eager, as He walks past. The three of them exchange a simple dialogue that I can’t shake from my mind,
Jesus: “What are you seeking?”
Men: “Where are you staying?”
Jesus: “Come and you will see.”
Jesus, who knows the unspoken things within each of our hearts and heads, asks these men, “What are you after? What are you looking for?” The men reply, “Where are you going to be?” which, isn’t really an answer to Jesus’ question. What they’re trying to say is, “We want to be where you are Jesus, we’re looking for you.” Details don’t matter so much to these men right now, they just want to be where Jesus is. Jesus doesn’t respond by saying, “I’m staying at the Inn down the road! I’ll be there three nights, and then I’m heading two towns over.” Nope. He simply offers them an invitation to come and be with Him, wherever He is going. And the men go, because if Jesus is there, the rest doesn’t matter.
In my search for home, in my waiting for the building, this is becoming my conversation with Jesus, too.
“Jesus, where are you staying? I want to be where you are.”
“Come,” he says, “Come, and you will see.”
