On Home

This home is not mine.  

Two weeks ago I packed my things into a small storage unit and in two weeks I will be in South Africa.  As with many twenty two year old's, I have spent recent years trying to find who, what or where home is.  After studying abroad in 2010 I arrived back to St. Pete, FL, to the house where I grew up and wrote this:

Getting to South Africa took

many papers.

Today they are in the trash.

My bedroom has changed little since

leaving and

the house

is quiet.

I don't know how I like my tea anymore.

Where can I go to remember myself?

The church, the mall,

a book, a meal,

my studio, my music,

running down the road?

I did not know where home was.  I was done with college and decided to move Athens, Ga, on account of love.  Here I have learned that if I expect my location, jobs, relationships or financial situation to make me happy, I will always be dissatisfied.  I have learned that for me, maturity is worshiping God no matter what circumstance I am in. 

In 2011, feeling brave for removing myself from school for a year, I applied to graduate schools and wrote this in an entrance essay:  "Taking a break from academia was difficult for me, not only because I love school, but because I was under the illusion that only with an advanced degree would I find the perfect job and only with the perfect job would I find contentment.  Now I'm pretty sure the  perfect job doesn't exist.  Even if I became the highly successful painter I wanted to be, if I bypass people, if I forget about serving people, I've missed the point."

A year of "real world" experience was not enough.  I did not get into an affordable grad school (I know, I'm crazy for thinking grad school should be affordable, but I can't afford to think otherwise).  I continued to struggle to feel at home and at peace with where my life was.

Today I cannot speak about a solution without speaking about God.  He changes my perspective daily.  I listened to a sermon recently that put it well: "Everything and everyone here is not home.  Unless you realize this, you will always feel estranged.  You will be always traveling and never arriving. God is the home we are missing.  God is the home we somehow remember - walking with Him in the garden in cool of the day, seeing His face.  He is the home our hearts are always longing for and Jesus has opened the door and paid the mortgage."

I am not home yet, and won't be while I'm in this flesh, but I am grateful to the Holy Spirit for allowing pieces of heaven to be realized on earth, and to Jesus for being the bridge back to walking with God in the Garden.  

J.R.R. Tolkein wrote that "Not all who wander are lost."  As I look forward to the privilege of traveling to a foreign country again, I remember that everywhere I go, and in every stage of life, if I am with God I am home.