Home

After recently moving away from places and people I had always called home, I have been dwelling more and more on what “home” even means.  There are cities I have lived in and people I’ve lived with I could all label home.  However, that would go against the common notion that there is only one place to call home.

Home is the front yard where as a kid, I refused to go swimming until I mastered riding my bike.  When I go after-Christmas-shopping with my mom and my aunt, I always feel at home.  Home is having breakfast in bed with my cat and having a favorite coffee shop in town.  It is the hill I sled down on as a kid with my brother and sister.  The friends that love sunsets and stargazing as much as I do are home to me.  The games played with my family at Christmas - those feel like home, too.

While being back in Mississippi over the winter break, I had lunch with one of my campus ministers from college.  We were talking about how time in Waco was for me, and I was explaining how finding community in this new city was going.  “It’s been a slow process,” I said as I was trying to find the right words, “but I can see where it’s taking form.”  My campus minister looked at me like he always does when he’s about to share a wise bit of advice then said, “You know, new good community will eventually form there, as it should.  But you haven’t lost the community you already had.  Sure, it’s more ‘spread out’ now…but you still have community.”  After that, his frequent reminder “Different isn’t bad, it’s just different.” played in my head.  (I made sure to say that aloud to him just to let him know I still haven’t forgotten it.)

I spent the first 18 years of my life in the same city, followed by a few years at community college in a town a short distance away.  Summers in between were spent in cities miles and miles away.  My final years at college were in the Delta, and now I mark Waco as the place I live.  My hometown has my family and the high school I spent hours at in classes and in band.  It’s also where the church I grew up in is, and it’s only a drive to Memphis, where I was taught from a young age nothing beats Memphis basketball.  My community college town doesn’t have much to it, but it’s where I found some of the most genuine friendships.  It’s where I learned what being a disciple of Christ truly means and where I began the confusing process of figuring out what “being called to ministry” is.  Time in Houston brought me incredible people who still show up in my life and a reshaping of how to do ministry.  Time in Worcester gave me a city that somehow encompassed my favorite aesthetic with old buildings, coffee shops, and wood floors, while drawing my heart to the people there.  A few years in the Delta provided more sincere and encouraging friendships.  It brought many hard and beautiful conversations in the only coffee shop in town, and it brought clarity to the ministry the Lord uniquely wired me for.  And Waco…well, we’ll see what it brings.

All that to say, I could be in any of those cities mentioned and feel at home.  There are aspects of each that I love.  However, there are many other places I’ve visited, yet none of those would feel like home.  I believe there’s a reason for that.  What I’ve come to realize is home is not a physical place.  Maybe it is not certain people either.  I am starting to believe it is instead a feeling that is associated with places and people.  Home is the places and people that shaped me, encouraged me, taught me, and loved me over the years.  Even more, home includes the places and people I have yet to come across in life, the ones that will soon impact my life.

Home for me is sitting across from a person and feeling truly known.  It’s being on a couch with a friend and watching the Office for hours.  It’s deep conversations about quotes recently read in a book.  It’s biscuits in the morning and homemade spaghetti at night.  It’s stargazing in the back of a truck with a group of friends, singing and worshipping the Lord together.  It’s riding in a 12 passenger van in the Houston heat, but also shoveling a minivan out of snow in Worcester.  It’s worship nights at college ministries and discipleship times in my apartment with international students.  But more than anything, it’s just the presence of people who make me feel at home.  The thing I find the most interesting, though, is while all of these remind me of home, they are all from different places and times in my life.

Over the recent Christmas break, I already had the idea of writing about the feeling of home.  I brainstormed different ways to communicate it in addition to writing about it and came up with an idea.  I had various friends and family I saw over the break find a photo of them during a past Christmas.  They brought the photo, and I took a picture of them holding the photo.  It seems like a simple plan, and it was.  However, what I hoped to be expressed by these photos was how the feeling of home is captured in moments of time.  No doubt, today these individuals could look at the photo from a past Christmas and say it reminds them of home.  However, years later, they could look at the photo I just took over the break and say the same thing.

Home can be found anywhere.  It’s in the connections we make with people and the memories we make every day.  It may change throughout life and look a little different.  But…..different isn’t bad, it’s just different.