What is Home?

I have learned at many junctures in my life that interim periods are not easy. As it turns out, instability, uncertainty, change, standing in a road that disappears a few feet in front of you with no clear direction, these are not things that human beings deal well with. That being said, they are things that human beings need and are the very things (according to John O Donohue) that can cause the most amount of growth in us. 

I feel like I have been living in almost a yearlong interim time. I applied for a position with the General Board of Global Ministries in early February, got an initial response in March, interviewed in April, got approval to move forward with medical clearance on Memorial Day and the final approval letter on June 29^th. I finished working at the church at the end of November and don't leave until the end of January. And these past 9 months has a painful discernment period in which I had to decide if I was really supposed to uproot one life I loved so dearly for another one that I had dreamed about for 10 years.  Suffice to say the tears have flowed freely on many days and I have often wondered what is so great about being the courageous brave person anyway. Some days (like today as I face an entire house that needs to be packed up when it feels like I just moved in) I really think that being comfortable might have been the better option. But I know (I hope) that feeling will pass.

In August, when I was just getting used to the idea of leaving, Harvey comes and goes, wrecking havoc on the city and taking my childhood home with it- the walls that witnessed my physical birth and every important milestone of my childhood; the front door that I was certain would continue to welcome me home from Brazil just like it has on every other trip I have taken, softly whispering, “its good to have you back. I’ve been waiting for you.” Mom and dad didn’t want to rebuild at their age and they were very fortunate to be in a position where they could in fact move to a new home. For that I am very grateful. But at the time, I couldn’t exactly express why I just couldn’t stop crying in those first few days after the storm. It’s just a house. It’s just material goods. Everyone is safe. It could have been worse. All true facts (although perhaps not the most helpful facts when your parents are left mucking through and throwing out 40 years of memories). All I knew was that my anchor of knowing exactly where home was that had allowed me to fly free for so many years had been cut off and I felt like I was flailing. Where is my home now if not on Penelope Dr.?  Had the storm happened when I was not about to move to the other side of the world, I think it would have been easier, but alas, timing is nothing if not ironic.

As I processed through this question of, “where is home now for me?” I continually remembered the cliché saying “home is where the heart is“ (I hate it when cliché sayings turn out to be true.) And in those first few weeks of seeing the bare bones of the house with its pulled up floors and the non-existent walls, I would stand in the living room and close my eyes and start to remember what the house looked like as a child. The sound of the back door closing when dad came home from work, all the ways I loved to rearrange my pink bedroom and twin sized day bed, the living room where my sister and I and all our friends would make up dances and have sleepovers, the old brown corduroy type couch where I would find my dad sitting as he played the 1812 overture to get us out of bed whenever we had company over. As I mentally walked through each room of the house, I smiled and laughed and cried and grieved, and then I realized, no matter where home is for me moving forward, no matter what door welcomes me back from Brazil, no one will ever be able to take those memories away from me. They are mine. They are home for me now. And I will carry them with me inside of me and that sacred and safe place will live tucked away in my heart for the day when I find myself on the other side of the world with no idea where I am going, feeling a little lost and flailing about. And I will remember that the question to ask is not necessarily “where is home?” anymore but “what is home?” And that is a little bit easier to answer.

When I left Brazil in 2013 to come home from internship, I came across this quotation from Oriah Mountain Dreamer that could not have been more perfect for me then, and I think even more so now…

“This is what home is: not only the place you remember but the place that remembers you, even if you have never been there before, the place that holds some essential piece of you in trust, waiting for you to return when you go out into other places in the world, as you must.”

May this essential piece of me be held well until we meet again…