finally home

One of the biggest things that the Lord taught me during my season of living and training in Gainesville Georgia is the way that I define the word home. He has taken the meaning of this word and stretched it far beyond what I ever imagined it would mean. In some ways, it has been painful, but in many other ways, it has been a blessing. 

There have been many places that I have called home in the past three months. On September 2nd I cried as I watched home #1, the house where my family lived, disappear behind a hill as my dad drove me to the airport. Over the next few weeks, home #2 would become my tiny tent in which I lived on the AIM campus in Gainesville. Home would also become all three of the squad meeting points we slept in when there was bad weather. When we did ministry with Samaritan’s Purse in Foley, Alabama, I found myself referring to not one, but two host churches as home. 

It is crazy for me to look back on my first few weeks of living in Gainesville when I was super homesick. I would sit in my tent, tears rolling down my cheeks, and tell God “I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go home.” 

Three months later I would return to that home, except I wasn’t actually home. Suddenly home was a bunch of different places, and as grateful as I was to be with my family again, I was excited to get back to the places that I had learned to love. I missed Gainesville, the city we’d lived in that was tucked away in the mountains of northern Georgia. I missed my team, some of my favorite people in the entire world. I missed the race, and all the ways it pushed me out of my comfort zone and closer to the Father. But then came a sneaky little email, and suddenly… 

I’m not going back. 

I had a harder time with this than I was willing to admit. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful for all of the extra time I would be getting with my family, or for the fact that now I get to sleep in a real bed longer than I expected. But it was my sweet sweet team, the goodbye that I didn’t get to say to our alumni team leaders, and the abrupt ending to my time on the AIM campus that kept my heart and mind wandering back down south. 

I was angry. I was upset. All the wounds I thought I had healed from on the race seemed to be ripped open again. I thought that I was taking steps backward after all of the forward progress I had made. I didn’t read my bible, I didn’t journal, I didn’t pray. 

The Lord, of course, did not stop pursuing my heart, and even though I still find myself sad and angry and simply grieving the ending of our first semester, I have come to another sweet realization that I am fighting to rest in. 

I have never been home. 

Y’all, our home is in Heaven. We are citizens of Heaven living in a foreign land until our sweet Savior calls us to be home with Him. We may be living here, but we are living in nothing more than a temporary home, a broken world between two gardens. And the Lord has been so sweet to reveal that even though this is our temporary home, He has given us so much beauty within it, and it’s OKAY that I find my heart in so many different temporary homes. 

My temporary home is in the cornfields of northwest Indiana with my fam. 

My temporary home is in the arms of my sweet team and in Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio & Pennsylvania. 

My temporary home is in little Foley, Alabama. 

My temporary home is in Gainesville and with all the incredible people who are lucky enough to call it their temporary home, too. 

In January, my temporary home will be in Quito, Ecuador. And I’m sure there will be many more places that I will call my temporary home until that sweet day I meet Jesus face to face. And you know where I’ll be? 

Home. Finally home.