This year, on a simplified level, is and was a year of loss. Many hellos and many goodbyes. Loving places and people and then leaving, abruptly and with no real guarantee of seeing any of it again. Losing a sense of who you were (and hopefully gaining an understanding of who you really are).
And a book I’m reading right now put so plainly the thoughts and emotions and fears that come when you love and lose things again and again.
“What will I lose? Health? Comfort? Hope? Eventually, I am guaranteed to lose every earthly thing I have ever possessed.
When will I lose? Today? In a few weeks? How much time have I got before the next loss?
Who will I lose? And that’s definite: I will lose every single person I have ever loved. Either abruptly or eventually. All human relationships end in loss. Am I prepared for that?
Every step I take forward in my life is a loss of something in my life and I live the waiting: How and of what will I be emptied today?” (from One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp)
And one of the biggest losses is your sense of home.
An experience like this strips the word “home” of any significant or traditional meaning. We stay in places for maybe 3 weeks, which is certainly not long enough to make a place a “home.” And as the year progresses, in fewer and fewer days, we call the place we simply sleep “home.”
“Home” this year has been a tent on a mountainside, an orphanage on an island, a mansion in a jungle, a dorm room at a mission base, a tiny house in the hood, a church building in the middle of nowhere, a homestead in the hills, a stone house in the mountains, and a log cabin near the beach. All of it, and none of it, was home.
And as the year-end approaches, we talk about going “home” — but are we really? When I say I’m going home, I mean to the United States, to my parents’ house, and also to the place where my friends and community are… and sometimes I mean all of those things at once. Home doesn’t have a simple definition, and it certainly doesn’t feel like just one place anymore.
And so it feels like I’m coming home again and again and again.
Home to where my passport doesn’t stand out anymore. Home to the country where I can eat all my favorite foods. Home to the house I did high school math homework in. Home to the church that was so hard to leave. Home to the people I can be the most absolutely real with. Home to the streets I know like the back of my hand, and all the sights and smells that make me think remember when. Home, home, and home again.
And all of it, no matter how much excitement and anticipation there is (because I am excited to be back in the U.S.A simply because I am a citizen here and I am excited for all the reunions with loved ones and first bites of foods long missed), is shroud with grief and sadness at the leaving and the changing and the passing of one season onto the next. There is great joy and there is great loss. Bitterness and sweetness wrapped up in tight embraces and silent tears and a whole lot of reflective wonder.
Part of me thinks, that really, truly, all of life is a series of homecomings that leave us wanting more. Excitement and relief tinged with a feeling that this really can’t be all there is. We can not and will never be fully satisfied by the world that was never meant to in the first place. We abandoned the fullness of God for a piece of rotten fruit thousands of years ago in a garden, and we still find ourselves today filling our bellies with rotten things and then wondering why we’re soul sick.
This world is not our home, which should comfort us and encourage us and light a fire under us to invite as many people as we can to the place we really will get to call Home, in all its glory and splendor, forever and ever, amen.
Well, friends, this is the end. The end of my time with the Race, and then end of my time with this blog. I am endlessly thankful for those who followed along as this journey transpired and read my ramblings week after week. Thank you to those who commented or encouraged my writing some other way. Thank you to those who silently but faithfully followed until the end, and then surprised me with your unfelt presence on this sometimes lonely journey. Thank you to those who supported me prayerfully and financially, who made 11 months of ministry across 3 continents and 10 countries possible. The journey began far before this year started, and it will continue long after this website is lost to the internet oblivion. Thanks for being a part of this small chapter, I am so grateful for you.
