Home (8/18/2023)

I’ve mentioned before that moving so many times in my life has been difficult. It became a real “thing” for me to plant roots and to feel like I belonged. When my husband proposed to me, I shared with him that I wanted roots. He promised me we would have roots. Well, it wasn’t his fault, but that didn’t happen. We moved so many times in our first 9 years of marriage that I was beginning to confuse boxes marked “Mayflower” with furniture. But then, with maturity, education, and prayer I came to realize something. Home isn’t a place I occupy; home is within me.

Home, I have learned is being comfortable in my own skin. It means acknowledging that there are needed improvements, but loving myself as I am in the moment, realizing the LORD loves me. As with physical homes, there is always need for improvements, but I understand now that I will only make them if I love myself as the LORD calls me to love myself. Without that love, it is too easy to neglect what I need most.

I think of the two great commandments. Love the LORD with all our being and love one another as we love ourselves. It’s in there – love for ourselves. It is part of the equation. It is part of the journey. But I suspect that I am not the only one who has struggled with this love.

A huge part of my confusion rested in the fact that my entire life I have been an “outsider.” I was from the “north” living in the south. When I returned to the north, I had a southern accent. I was new to town and didn’t fit in. It took time, it took patience, it took prayer, it took experience to realize that the problem wasn’t where I was, it was it who I was. When I was given the wisdom and grace to view myself first and foremost as a beloved daughter of the Almighty LORD and the beloved disciple of Jesus Christ, I was able to feel at home wherever I was because I realized those two realities followed me wherever I went.

And so, like a turtle, I carry my “home” with me. I am at home in a hotel, a church basement, the meat department at the local grocer, or the park bench by city hall. But I still long for a home that surpasses the home I have found here on earth; I yearn for the eternal home with my LORD, the home where I can truly and eternally be loved as me and be me with all the love that is.

As I journey, I reach out to all the others who are seeking to be at home with themselves but also for that home that we long for with every fiber of our being, that eternal home in our LORD. May our journeys here, this side of the sod, be marked with love for our LORD, love for others, and love for ourselves. May we see that only in recognizing the LORD’s love for us are we able to truly open ourselves to love of others. And may we feel at home regardless of what google map tells us.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.