the words that carry the hope

• only love can save us all
• thirty before thirty
• [almost] 100 things

11-09-09

cause grace looks back before it starts to leave

home is where the heart is.  or where your mom is.  i’ve heard it both ways. we’ve over-simplified it, in my opinion. wikipedia says it’s a place of residence OR of refuge and comfort.  that OR is important, i think.  my favorite (and probably the most accurate) quote about home is from garden state:

You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone… It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.

i’ve often said that i walked away from new york with two big life lessons (amongst so many small ones): 1. The local church is important, and 2. Community is absolutely vital.  Sometimes, like for me in New York, local church=community.  However, in Tennessee that’s not necessarily the case and that’s okay too.

My community in new york was made up of people who looked out for each other.  we included each other, offered support, sat in the front row, cried together, encouraged, confessed, fought, apologized, learned, LOVED.   it was tough to leave and for a few months i woke up debating if i made the right decision.

Tennessee just seemed liked it was going to be comfortable until i actually got here.  in reality, everything had changed – life doesn’t stop just because one moves away for 3 years.  everything is new: my job, my church, even some friends.  i thought my life here would look much like it did 3 years ago but it is vastly different.  however, when i say different i don’t mean different bad, i mean different good.  God has put some of the most amazing people in my path over the last 5 months.  He’s beginning to shape my community and it’s not the people i thought it would be.  He is stretching me and growing me and i just didn’t think it could be this good.

home has a different meaning for me now than it did five years ago.  it’s a fluid concept, not a location or a residence or one certain thing that you can wrap up nicely in a sentence.  it’s people. it’s community.  it’s Church in the global sense.  it’s sitting around a table and sharing your life with someone.  it’s celebrating birthdays, graduations, and holidays.  it’s family, both blood-related and not.  home can be anywhere, and it can be in more than one place.

(title song: from ‘no one really wins’ by copeland)

i asked some fellow bloggers to write about their concept of home, so click on these links to read more!