Home Isn't a Place

Spring Break. Usually it's associated with getting drunk and "loved up" in Florida, but for me I went home to North Carolina and I learned some things. And I wouldn't have traded this spring break for the world. Never have I desired to see my horses so much, and I learned that really... I missed my family as well. I've had so many thoughts throughout the break on how to express the growth I've experienced, but when I sit down to pour it out it runs away. :-)

I'm slowly learning the mountains must dissipate in their importance in my heart. That is, home is not a place. Home is where God plants you, and where your loved ones are. Home can be in more than one place. You carry home with you in your heart, because God is your greatest (or should be your greatest) loved One, then comes your family, then friends and pets. I hated the mountains when we first moved there. They were such an immensely real obstacle to my early childhood and the life I left in Liberty. But they became a spiritual training ground for me in so many ways. I learned to walk with God in them, and I came to love them for their beauty and the strength, and presence of God I experienced in them. Then I learned to love them for the family history they hold. To be able to say my family had lived on this very piece of land in this very cove since before the Civil War was astonishing to me. I truly felt I had become a part of them. And perhaps I am, in that there will always be a familiarity, like a favorite, well-worn pair of boots. But it cannot last forever. I was aware more this time of having a little more of the mountains being "home" torn away from me. It wasn't violent, perhaps it could best be explained as a degree of what Eustace Scrub went through in the Chronicles of Narnia. I'm being un-mountained instead of un-dragoned. Yet I feel I shall never lose the spiritual inheritance I gained there. Living Waters will always be a home to my heart. I know I am always welcome there.

I've also come to the realization that Springfield is an ugly city. I know. That's obvious, but I was having a really difficult time figuring out how I could want "this place" to become home and dislike it so much. I don't want Springfield to be home. At all. Nada. But! I could surely live in the countryside of southern Missouri. I'm grateful "southern-ness" isn't being required of me to give up ;-). I'll never regret the time I've spent in North Carolina. But, in spite of my occasional questionings, my heart tells me it's time for me to move on.

I do look forward to my family being here. I didn't really realize that I missed them until now. Yet this alone-ness is good too. To quote C.S. Lewis in an out of context way, it "cures my illusions about myself and teaches me to depend on God".