There's no place like home

A few nights ago, I was lying on my back on my bed, watching Grace search the room for her "sparkly" shoes.  Grace and I were in Massachusetts with Brian and the family, and were sleeping in Brian's room, on the huge California king sized bed that will one day belong to Brian and I.

While Grace searched, I jokingly asked her, if she found them, would she put them on and tap her heels together?

"There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home."

Grace smiled sadly, "Aw, mom..."

"The thing is," I pondered, "where would we end up if we did have ruby slippers that would take us home?"

She answered me, muffled, from under the bed, "I know, eh? "

She stood up, shoes in hand.

"People say, 'Home is where your people are,' but seriously, what does that even mean?" Grace rolled her eyes as she slipped her shoes on and grabbed her purse.

What does that even mean?

When your people are spread across the country, across the continent, across the sea?  When you have "people" that you love with all your heart and haven't even met yet? 

In a very real way, I can understand how the presence of people make a place feel like home.  I feel a deepening attachment to Darren, to his parents, to his places.  The beach Grace will jog on, the bus she'll take into Great Yarmouth, the place Darren worked at, the people she loves there. This past week the museum that Darren worked at, Yesterday's World, shut down. I felt oddly sad.  Of course, I had hoped to visit it when I went to visit Grace and Darren, but it's more than that. Darren's pictures of empty shelves and hollow rooms leave me feeling forlorn. 

There are so many people, though. So many places. So many homes.  I feel more and more at home here in Baldwinville, in the house, with this family.  On Sunday, I sat with Grace in church and pointed out people that I knew, names and everything. There are more every week.  I am even learning which kids belong to which parents.  It's a start.

The fact remains that, should Grace and I find a pair of magical ruby slippers that could take us home at a few heel clicks, we're not sure where we'd end up.

It's an odd feeling. 

The interesting thing, though, is that as we become more and more aware of our tremendous blessings, and draw closer and closer to the God of our sorrows AND our joys, home is becoming less about place, and less about people. I think the destination of our ultimate journey is to understand and embrace the fact that home is where our Lord is, our Love, our Jesus, our God.  And we fully believe that the Spirit of our Lord God makes His home within us.  And so, home is wherever we are.

Home is where there is comfort, familiarity, rest. Home is where being authentically ourselves is safe, normal, welcomed. Home is where, in the warmth of love, there is freedom to see ourselves as we are, to ponder and pray and confess and to be transformed into our whole selves, in the image of the One whose love makes home real.

There is a beautiful peace that comes from the awareness that home is within me, where Jesus is. Scripture calls it the peace that surpasses human understanding. 

It is an even lovelier joy to be able to lead my daughter into this awareness, to send her into the wide world knowing that her base camp, her stronghold, her home fires burn within her, in the Person of Jesus. 

Our earthly homes may be a bit of a fluid concept right now, but our true home is as solid and as real and as ours as the God who is decorating it with His love and beauty. 

There is, truly, no place like home.