Where is Home?

Well, we are home from a trip to the midwest, where we went home to visit family, and to be trained for our new home next month.

Home has been an important concept for me, and one I struggle with. As we tell our story of becoming missionaries, it is this search for home that really gets at the heart of the journey.

When people ask me where I am from, I stumble a bit. It's not just because I've lived in seven States. It's because the places I have spent the most time -- the obvious "homes" -- are places I never felt comfortable. "Home is where the heart is" of course is the obvious answer, and my heart was never in Syracuse, NY or northern NJ. But it is something more than that. Because a lot of my heart is in these places...I have many fond memories of Syracuse, and I have been blessed beyond measure in NJ, but they are places I have always held at a distance.

Meanwhile, I have felt a great sense of peace and joy in finding places that I DO belong. It didn't take very long at all for Calvin College to become home after I left "home." Even last week, sitting among friends and family, that same feeling of belonging came right back. West Michigan is one of my "homes" whether I like it or not! Since this true sense of home is rare for me, I am aware of it when it does appear, no matter how strange the place. I am "home" in Epcot down in Disney World, of all places. And I definitely had that feeling on my trip to Uganda this year.

I always hesitate to pull out Jeremiah 29:11, because I've heard it said that the verse is always taken out of context. If I am getting it right, in this passage of Jeremiah, God tells the Israelites that they are going to be taken away from home for a while and put into exile. BUT, while they are in exile, they should settle down, build homes, have kids, and be blessed. They might not be home, but God will bless them anyway.

My pastor did a sermon about this right at the time that I started thinking about moving to Tanzania. For years, I have felt "in exile" in New Jersey. Again, it's not that NJ has been a bad place to live. But we came into it in a bad way.

About 15 years ago, my wife and I had a fun social outing in Grant Park in downtown Chicago with some friends. We had lived in Chicago for about a year, and we had been struggling with this same notion: is Chicago home? Should we go somewhere else? It was actually kind of a magical, moving moment (I mean, I could still find the exact spot where it happened), when we both vocalized that we were finding a home in Chicago, and that we should probably stay there for awhile. We were happy. We both started making plans with our jobs to extend what were year-long assignments. Within a week, life turned upside down. We found out Steph's Dad was seriously sick, and it didn't take long at all to realize God wanted us in New Jersey with the family.

So, to me, New Jersey has been exile. And God did come through with his Jeremiah 29:11 promises. A house! Three amazing kids! A church that loves us and cares for us! I found my calling as a teacher! You couldn't GET much more "I have plans to prosper you" than that. And yet...it's exile, not home. Maybe this sounds selfish and silly. All I can say, though, is that every vacation to Michigan has increased our craving for finding home. Friends (and we do have some dear, dear ones) have been hard to come by. We've felt lonely and frustrated. We wished and prayed New Jersey would turn into home -- it never did.

And so, the search has always continued; the prayers asking God to give us a home have always continued. My pastor's sermon consolidated a lot of these thoughts for me. It made me realize both how blessed I have been, and how it is OK to admit that New Jersey is not home. And it made me start thinking hard about moving out of exile and searching for a new home.

Of course, I don't know if Tanzania is that place. In fact, it almost certainly is NOT. I know that I am destined to always have a longing for a place beyond what I can find on Earth. We were made to be citizens of another Country, and the mortal one will never be fully home. I hope for belonging, and I am reminded of Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 1: "I am not my own, but belong body and soul to my Lord Jesus Christ!"

In the end, I need to continue defining my home with THAT belonging. You don't need to move to Africa to find that. However, as we found out, trying to respond to that belonging just might cause you to anyway!