Home. Again.

I hope y'all enjoyed the Blog Carnival yesterday! I know I sure did. Nerdy, you say? Maybe a bit. But writing about my own thoughts on Home ended up being a great time of reflection that I didn't even know I needed. And reading the thoughts of the 25 other bloggers' - some of them are among my closest friends and others I haven't even met - was such a treat, not to mention pretty eye-opening.

After organizing this day-of-blogging-fun, Elizabeth put together the below post that brings all 26 of our thoughts together so perfectly, I just couldn't help sharing! So enjoy, and be sure to click through to the full posts from the Carnival if you haven't had a chance already - there's some pretty fantastic writing out there:

A few weeks ago Jamie and I had the idea that we’d do a blog carnival. And, honestly, I’m blown away at the response. 25 absolutely incredible bloggers participated and shared their hearts on home. I gave no boundaries as to what they could write about, but as i read through entry after entry i picked out a line or two that stuck out to me. I copied them all into my blog admin page so that i could quote from every single one, and as read through them all i realized something:

we just wrote a story. collectively. we don’t all know each other; some of us have never even met. however, we are intricately woven together as part of a Bigger story.

so this is what i did with it.

enjoy.

When you think about it, “Where are you from?” is asking so much more than to simply name a city. Where I am from isn’t as important as where I am going. Home is not defined by geography, and neither am I. It is not a geography of latitudes and longitudes. It is not just a bloodline or a shared surname. Home is where you ache from the violence of separation, however temporary or eternal that separation might be. Home is where I’m good at being [myself]. Growing up i was a participant in the home my parents had built… now i’m leading and defining my own version of home. My roots are there, but my heart is here.

It’s a place where you should always feel loved. there is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS love. and that, right there in the middle of it, that is home. home is spending time in community. home is hope for what is ahead. Home…is where I learned that I could be myself (however crazy that may be) and still be loved just the same (and maybe just a little bit more). I feel like myself here. This is my home. For now. It’s relying on best friends who help keep me sane. it’s typically busy, it’s frequently crazy, it’s where i live. it is everything i love.

So in the meantime, i will fight to find meaning and a sense of belonging in each moment, each place. Home has a different meaning for me now than it did five years ago. It’s sitting around a table and sharing your life with someone. The table is just a device that draws us close. And yet it’s this coming together that makes home.

I’m really excited at the possibility that God could revolutionize my relationships with those people by revolutionizing my relationship with Him. I’m on a mission to know God and make Him known and sometimes that means I have to be a little embarrassed/uncomfortable/faithful/committed. We are all too often blinded to the reality of eternity. In our blindness we seek to construct, create or cultivate the most comfortable earthly homes and wonder when are hearts seem so restless. Isn’t home where we ought to be able to rest? Yet in the most wonderful homes there is a lingering homesickness for another place. It is Christ who remains. That is home. That is what we were made for.

I’ve been to these places and loved the people who live there now, yet not one location has been able to fill the empty spot I have reserved in my heart for a permanent “home.” The place that is so different from what I’ve always known, yet so comfortable and, somehow, familiar. This world is too large to live in one place for forever. whether it’s short- or long-term, i know i have somewhere else to discover someday. My fear is that one day I will meet someone that won’t know this part of me. They will not know that this experience has shaped me into who God is asking me to be. I have been challenged to go beyond so many comfort levels that I would have never thought possible; all the while learning that I can, in fact, appreciate the beauty in differences.

I love to write about home, but I also knew that it would come on the end of me leaving a place that I thought would become my permanent home. And when, in two weeks, I pack up my last suitcase and turn in my keys and hail a cab, I’ll be moving home, and leaving home, and going home, and missing home, all at the same time.