Where is Home?
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit my family in Chicago. This was the first time seeing them since my father’s funeral in November 2023. People that I dearly love who are now 1800 miles away from me and my little family. People that I dearly love who will always be with me because they will always be my little family.
Like my young adult years, I’m missing opportunities to create memories with them as they celebrate holidays, birthdays and just being together. Regrets that become more pronounced each time I visit and spend time with them. Regrets that I’ve learned to live with because my exodus to the desert would lead to my salvation. My humbled heart hugged by God’s love.
The Prodigal Son returning home, the lost sheep found, the missing coin discovered. My first family rejoicing because I found my way back home. My heart is at peace because I am home. God is my home.
My trip to sweet home Chicago is always sweet and bitter. Making new memories that will only remind me of how much I love and miss these people. Knowing that at some future point, most of my family will leave Chicagoland and the land of Lincoln. Scattering ourselves across the country. Taking the familiar Midwestern journey of seeking an easier and enhanced life as they grow older. A journey that my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins have all taken.
Family gatherings that dwindled in numbers as I got older. People that I love returning home to God. People that I still miss. People that include my father.
Most days my life seems like a Neil Diamond song. Feeling lost between two lands. Vegas is fine, but it ain’t home. Chicago’s home but it ain’t mine no more. I am I said.
But the real reality (a redundant refrain), is that neither place is really home. Home isn’t about habitation, but the heart. We can lay our head anywhere, but we expose our heart at home.
For too many years of my life, I hide my heart from the world including my family. When I was younger I lived in fear of myself. A fear that created colossal walls around my young heart in my effort to protect it from an unloving world. Later in life these walls would petrify and prevent my heart from receiving and sharing God’s love.
This resistance to Love was fueled by my own pride and prejudice. My own hubris and haughtiness. My ego lying to me, telling me that God was an arbitrary allegory and an antiquated archaism. Like Adam and Eve and all their descendants, I didn’t trust in my Creator who has always loved me. Who has always loved you.
I have surrendered both my life and my heart to God. My heart’s walls have crumbled and collapsed. Brought down by the power and glory of God’s love. Love is the most powerful force in the universe. Love is what created the world and what sustains it. God is love.
My heart no longer lives in solitaire. I am not an island unto myself. I now know that I was never really alone. No one is. Another worldly lie that I wanted to believe because of my resistance to Love. God is, was and will always be with me, even when I wasn’t always with God.
My heart is at home with God. Learning the language of love. Trying my best to express love in all my interactions with all people by living a life of right relations with God, myself, others and all of creation.
My heart teaching me that Love is home. A home alive in this world. A home alive when I leave this world. Home is anywhere our heart honors God and of course, there’s no place like home.
Peace. God loves you.