Home is Where the Heart is ?!?

If home is where the heart is, than I’m in trouble. My heart is in pieces all over the country. With every goodbye at FLI, I left pieces of my heart behind with the students and staff. As I drove home across the country I talked with or saw a lot of old friends and family on the way through. They too held some of my heart.

The closer I came to home, the more familiar the surroundings became, but the stranger I felt. I recognized them, but did they recognize me? Do I recognize myself? I’m more sure of myself than I have ever been, I learned a lot about who I was in the Lord, so why am I so unsure in the midst of the old familiar? The only consistency I found was change it’s self.

I spent a lot of time at FLN (Where I’ve been working - before FLI) and then even some time in my old apartment. I sat on my old comfy couch and enjoyed the comfort it gave, but it was like simply visiting a friends. It didn’t seem like my apartment any more. I realized that I have been out of that apt as long as I had lived in it before. It’s also been close to 4 years since I moved out of my parent’s house – that will always be ‘home’, but at the same time it isn’t.

Where was my home? Is my home? Who I am doesn’t or shouldn’t change in the light of my surroundings. Is my home spread out all over the country with my heart? There is beauty in that thought, but a lot of pain too.

As I contemplated this, the Lord began whispering to my heart. “Home; IS where your heart is, because I hold your heart; pieces and all.” Peace flooded through me as I chewed on this. Surroundings, states, buildings, apts, the familiar, they are nothing. I gave my heart to the Lord- for Him to hold. He hasn’t let go and won’t as I ride out these emotions.

“even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”

(Psalm 139:10)

Anyone else here too? In the light of Christmas, if you are not near the ones you love, or not all of them, take heart. He is holding your heart, and your home and resting place is and can be found in Him.