Home.

It is where I woke up the other morning after many weeks on the road and in the air and otherwise away. I woke with a gasp that dark morning.  It was not yet dawn and my jet-lagged body had startled awake, too early, only to find itself in yet another room.  It took some seconds for my eyes to focus on the shadowy figures of the armoire and fireplace and realize I was in my own bedroom once more. Home.

I have thought about that pretty constantly over the past several weeks. Were we leaving home or going back home? Did we come back home this week or have we left home once more? Friends know I have wrestled with the definition of home for a lot of years. Just when I make peace with it all something tugs at the heart and makes me dig deeply to remember those things I have articulated to myself so many times before. 

The most recent "thing" happened while we were sitting at the Dept of Motor Vehicles in the States getting our licenses renewed. Our "home" state now requires proof of physical (in-state) residence to apply for a license.  Military members are in a unique situation because we physically reside at our temporary military assignment but we remain legal residents of our state of origin, paying state taxes and voting there.  We reminded the DMV clerk of this.  She pointed again to the residence requirement.  We asked what procedure they had in place for military folks.  They didn't.  

We worked out a solution in the end but the whole exchange left me rattled. We had been living out of suitcases for nearly three weeks at that point. We had lodged in six different places by that time.  We had just gotten over jet lag and were readjusting to the thin air after having stayed over in the midwest.  I was tired.  And it hit me hard that I had no "home" place to give a person.  

I remembered another exchange before we bought the ranch many years ago.  I was a board member for our local homeschool group and there was a proposal before the board that concerned many of us moms. When I spoke out against it during the discussion period one very annoyed woman said to me bluntly, "Why are you even participating in this discussion?  Aren't you going to move eventually?"

Standing at the DMV desk I felt just like I had that day, like I didn't belong anywhere. I know this isn't exactly true.  It is truer to say I belong MANY places.  But also to no specific place.  And right then it made me very sad. I wanted a place.

Julie Rivera summed up really well here.  It's the disorientation that gets you some days.  After spending time with friends "back home" (which of course means the most recent "home") I found myself dwelling overly much about what it might be like to have the same dentist for years at a stretch. To round the same corner, to the same favorite grocer week after week.  To reach for the Christmas tablecloth in the same drawer season after season.  To watch the same group of children grow together into young adults. To organize a closet and know that with reasonable maintenance you will continue to find the same things inside of it year after year.  It all got very rosy in my mind.  The alternative loomed large and daunting. 

It's easy to do, to let yourself believe the grass is greener and gloss over the very real challenges that come with other circumstances.  In truth, my friends shared their own daydreams about living in different places and different houses, about feeling sometimes stuck. That is reality.  Every place, every situation comes with it's own trials and blessings. 

St Paul came back to me more than once, that part about being content in all circumstances.  We too have known both abundance and need. Sickness and health.  Geographic stability and also transience.  I know better than to hitch my happiness wagon on unreliable, unpredictable circumstances.  

If there is one thing reiterated over and over in scripture it is that we are strangers and sojourners so long as we are here. Wherever here happens to be. It is not our final destination and it is best to hold loosely to it.  I reminded myself of that too, when the sun rose on the explosion of daffodils and trees in bloom.  They are not ours.  We will not always wake up here.  That is ok too.  It is a beautiful respite, a temporary gift we call the present.

We have known other places.  In fact I brought back a picture of the place I spent many years as a child, first as my babysitter's home and then as the house we lived in during my elementary school years.  It is there behind the snow drift next to the school gym.  Or it was.  Cars park there now. Like so many of the houses I have lived in, it is gone now. It is always a shock to see the space where home once was, and is no more, but it is also a good reminder.  It is all passing.  

 

 

 

So once again I tell myself: Home is not a certain place, it is belonging. And I always belong right where God has put me.  I have left pieces of my heart many places over the years.  God has been there in all of them and no matter how far I roam from familiar faces and spaces, He will always be close by. That's what home is and without that no place feels quite right. 

Now that I have my bearings again I am soaking up the bounty of blooms all around us right now.   Come and take a virtual walk around the place with me.  Are you sighing as deeply as I am?  Spring in this climate is just breath taking. I want to memorize every bit of it, should our next destination be desert or mountain or plain or coast or who knows what.