Home Sweet Home

Have you ever wrestled with the concept of what “home” is? It’s something I’ve thought about often and I’ve actually written and re-written blog posts about what “home” means to me. I never posted any of those, but this week, I ran across a blog carnival based on this very thing. I realized that I’m not the only one who thinks about this and I also realized that it’s time to post this entry!

When I was little and would get sick and was feeling really bad, I would cry to my mom, “I just want to go home!” She would always reply, with a slight giggle, “Sweetie, you ARE at home!” I honestly never knew what I meant by it, but it was always what came out of my mouth when I was home sick.

I think the concept of “home” can be difficult to grasp sometimes and maybe it even has different definitions. After all these years, I think I have finally started to grasp the true meaning of “home”.

From the time I was 2.5 until I was 18, most people would have considered a split-foyer home on Kohler Circle in Columbia, Missouri my home. And for the most part, I would definitely agree. But, you also hear the saying “home is where the heart is” and my heart longed for a life in the Big-D all those years. Now, I have to be honest….looking back, I realize that at that age I thought Dallas was one big amusement park. I mean, my time spent there every Holiday season and every summer consisted of playing with my cousins and going to places with them like Six Flags, White Water, Penny Whistle Park, Ice Skating, and Chuck-E-Cheese…to name a few. But, I always knew in my heart that someday it would be “home”, just maybe not in the sense I thought of it as a child.

As I attended college in Waco, I still considered Columbia “home”. In fact, it may have been more “home” to me then than it ever was before. I longed for Columbia during those years…the familiarity and comfortableness of it. Waco never felt like “home”, although I did refer to my apartment as “home” because it was where I retreated at the end of every day. By the end of college, I had decided that I wasn’t sure that Texas was really for me, but I had gotten a great job offer in Dallas and didn’t see any sense in not taking it. That first year in Dallas, I thought a lot about moving back “home” to Columbia.

That all began to change in 2000 & 2001 and Dallas seemed to become “home”. I began to catch myself referring to Columbia as my “hometown”, rather than my “home”. It had become simply the place I grew up, rather than the place I felt was “home” in my heart.

I hate it when people make cheesy references to 9/11 (you know, like when Jessica Simpson says that’s when she decided to get back together with Nick and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him? Gag!). Anyway, I have to honestly say that it was during the week of 9/11 that I began to think that Dallas had become “home”. I remember my roommate, Deanna, breaking the news to me with tears in her eyes. Then, we spent the entire afternoon watching TV together-- most of the day we were lying on her bed, (which now seems so funny because in her room was a really old, tiny TV and in the living room was her bigger, nicer TV). But, that’s where we stayed for a good part of the day trying to understand what was happening and calling our family and friends. Later that evening, we went to a prayer service at our church. I went back to church the next night to work with the kids at Mission Friends like I did every Wednesday. On Thursday night, I was back at the church again for another prayer service for the people affected by 9/11, for our country and its leaders, etc… On Saturday, I was there again for the SatNight service and was back again on Sunday for Sunday School. I had gone to church 5 out of the 6 days since 9/11 and I was SO thankful that I had a place to go where I could pray with people and worship God for who He is and for His great plans and His perfection even in the midst of such a great tragedy. The fact that this place felt like “home” suddenly became very real to me. But it wasn’t just Dallas that was home and it wasn’t just my apartment. It was my church and it was Deanna and the rest of our amazing friends.

Now, I find myself in New York City. After all those years in Missouri longing for Dallas, I spent much of my time in Dallas wondering if I’d every buck-up and go on a long-term adventure to the big city I’d grown to love. New York has become my home in so many ways. I love my comfortable, yet itty-bitty apartment. I love my church. I love the community of Southern friends I’ve found here. I love my co-workers. It has become comfortable. It is home.

Yet, Dallas is also still home. My parent’s house is home even thought I’ve never lived there. And when people ask where I’m from, I struggle to answer…Dallas or Columbia or to tell the long version of how both have been my home.

It’s all so confusing, eh?

I gotta love this quote from “Sweet Home Alabama” about now… "I'm happy in New York, Jake. But then I come down here, and this fits, too. Since when does it have to be one or the other? You can have roots and wings" Oh, how true it is.

So, those are some very obvious ideas of what “home” has been in my life. But, there is a whole other concept of “home” that is probably my very favorite.

I attended a dinner that Jill Briscoe spoke at several years ago. At that dinner, she told her own 9/11 story. She was on a plane coming back to the U.S. from England. In the middle of the flight, the pilot announced that the borders to the U.S. had been closed and the plane would have to be re-routed. People on the plane began to worry and panic about what was going on. Sitting next to Jill was a model (she did not name the model, but something she said made me think it was probably someone famous). The model kept saying, “I just want to go HOME!” Jill turned to the model and asked, “Oh, do you have a wonderful home and family”? To which, the model replied, “Oh, no! My home is a horrible place”! Jill reminded us how on 9/11, everyone just wanted to go to the place they knew as “home”-- even if it was a place where there was anger or fighting or abuse or grief. Then Jill explained to us her belief that, “what all of us really want is to go HOME”, and she pointed heavenward as she said it.

I’m with Jill. I have a deep longing for a “home” that will never be met here on earth. I think that’s why I began to feel such a strong sense of “home” that week of 9/11...because in Dallas I had found myself in a place where I was surrounded by Christians who I was in constant fellowship with; because I spent so much time in prayer and in worship and felt the presence of God in my ordinary daily life. When we experience things like these it is the closest we can come on earth to experiencing what heaven will be like. (This also explains why I felt so far from home during my time in Waco. I was rarely going to church during that time, was not spending much time in prayer or in the Word.)

I think that God planted in each of us a deep desire to go to our heavenly home. I think that’s a desire that is with us from the time we are born and is what caused me to cry for home when I was sick as a little girl. Isn’t that where we all want to be? In a place where there is no illness, where there is only peace, where we can spend eternity rejoicing together with our closest family and friends? I know that’s where I want to be…I know that it is my Home, Sweet, Home. But, in the meantime, I will gladly settle for getting the clearest glimpses of heaven that I can and right now, for me, that’s in New York and it’s at my church and it’s serving Him and following Him to the best of my ability because that is what God has called me to and when I am in His will, I am closest to Him and when I’m closest to Him, I am closest to “home”.