I’m blogging in the airport…again. I guess it’s the easiest way to force myself to condense and process three weeks devoid of any sort of writing. The San Diego airport is a complete ghosttown, a luxury compared to countless memories of the horrors of LAX.
While checking my baggage at the curbside checkin, a sweet younger man asked me if I was headed home. I have to wonder if the time it took me to reply made him question my sobriety. It brought back that same question that has been simmering in my mind for weeks, months, and almost a year [since I have lived in Kansas City since last July.]
Where is home?
Up until now, home has always been a no-brainer — wherever my parents live, which happens to be Oceanside, CA. As I’ve meandered the path of young adulthood, I have realized that home has so much more to do with people than any geographic location.
This past month, my Mom, my best friend, and I traveled with a group of other Californians to Bucerias, Mexico to do missions and humanitarian work. We stayed in the same place, Villa Amor, that we have been going to since I was a young teenager. Nostalgia kicked in as we said goodbye to our long-term “missions church family”, as I call it, and I suddenly realized that my deep emotional ties to our trips with Circle of Concern had much more to do with each person that I have shared those memories with.
*See pictures from our trip here
As I head from the West back to the Midwest, there is a certain sense of being homeward bound, but there is also the heartbreaking emotion of leaving behind people that have at one time or another felt like my home.
I’m coming to terms with biblical terms such as ’sojourners’, ‘pilgrims in the earth’, and ‘longing for the heavenly tent [dwelling]‘ as I realize that this sense of homey longing is not a sign of my emotional instability or feeling unsettled in the present, but a reminder that I was created for a different sort of home: an eternal one without decay, lost friends, or regret.
Part of me wants to imagine that marriage or having my own family will rebirth this comforting sense of home that embraced me as a child, however I know through witnessing tragic divorces and hurting families, that it is but a mirage that will only satisfy to an extent. Jesus is meant to be my home, and the same hunger that drove me to him when I was 19 and happy in every material sense will continue to remind me that I am but a pilgrim.
It is a pleasant reminder:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
5“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Matthew 5
1 Comment
August 29, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Alyssa, I have experienced similar emotions and realizations, more intensely now than I have in recent years. I am finding that “home” has to do with “family”, and that “family” can be any person or people with whom we share support, emotion, and ambition. And that is home. Maybe for some people, “home” is only one place. And maybe for some of us, it is every place we’ve been where we’ve had those families. And every time we are around them, we feel home. Keep ‘em comin’!