Home? ...Defining and Equivocating

I've been home in Texas for a week now.

I'm not sure what I think about that statement. On the one hand, I love being home. We got to hang out with all my cousins last night, and I realized just how much I had missed my family (even if I didn't really have time to realize it while I was away). Yet part of me still feels like "home" is somewhere else - yes, in a very special lodge hidden in the San Juan mountains, but more so with a very special group of 40 people I call my Semester family.

For the first time this year, I've begun to think of places other than the North Texas address I've lived at for most of my life as "home." I've now lived outside of Texas for the first time in my life, and this year is the first time I have seriously contemplated moving much farther away - as in halfway across the globe. (And I'm sure this post, just like this one did nine months ago, is making my mom seriously freak out...)

To quote from the aforementioned post:

I miss it.

It is so different than home. And in a million ways, I'm so glad to be home. But for the first time in my life, I've recently entertained thoughts that "home" may be far from my beloved Texas.

I couldn't be happier with my home as it is right now. I'm not looking for a one-way ticket to Timbuktu or anywhere else. But my heart longs for Home, and deep down, I know my allegiance is first and foremost to that Place, to Him who makes it Home, and not to geography or ideals or people.

Meaning, I know I will have to be in whichever place He decides is most necessary for His glory and the good of all those who may one day call His presence "Home."

The context of this is coming back from Asia, another place where my heart felt strangely at home, yet I find these words ringing true again. Perhaps they have a deeper meaning to me now, after living away from what I've always known as "home."

I felt at home at Semester like I've never felt at any other place or with any other group of people, save my family. And while I miss them dearly, it is stirring something deeper within me. Beck wrote in her blog near the end of the Semester that we could now identify with the Penvensie children having to leave Narnia. The experience is similar, I think - we got a taste of otherworldliness, how this world is supposed to be - and that stirs a deep longing which cannot easily be fulfilled. I'm reminded of CS Lewis' journey as chronicled in Surprised by Joy.

Yet as Lewis writes, this longing, this Joy, is not the end in of itself. It is the signpost that leads to something much greater, Home. Heaven. The New Creation.

Revelation 21: 1-5
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"