Home
Well, we’re on our way home from Thailand and Qatar. A few hours ago, we began the long journey back to Iowa. It’s been a whirlwind of a trip. When I get back from these trips, people sometimes ask if I feel refreshed. Spiritually, absolutely! These trips always help me reframe my perspective and focus on what’s most important. But mentally and physically? No, I’m spent….the tanks are empty! In a lot of ways, my day-to-day life will be a slow-down from what we’ve been doing these past 10 days. Though these trips fill my tank to the brim, I’m always glad to be home. I’m excited to be home. I miss home.
Home. We often use the words house and home interchangeably. “I built a new home.” “We bought a vacation home.” I don’t think these words are one and the same. A house is a building. It has four walls, a room, and beds. But a home? It’s so much more. It’s not a neighborhood. It’s not a town. It’s the space you retreat to each night, where you share life with your closest family, surrounded by all the other meaningful people in your life. It’s togetherness, community, safety, and support. They are not the same.
In our culture, we obsess about where we live. Bigger, better, newer….the pursuit for more status and more comfort. When I left my prior career and we downshifted our life, we also made a drastic decision about where we live. We sold our large, new house, and elected to rent a small townhome. After three years in the townhome, we moved in a small, 60-year-old rental house in the older neighborhood of our city. It’s safe to say this is my lowest standard of living in the last 20 years. But it’s our home! This is where my kids feel safe. It’s where we create memories and play. It’s where we meet up at the end of each crazy and chaotic day and be together. I don’t care if it’s in a mansion or a tiny house. No building defines my home. Home is wherever my people are.
I don’t frankly care what building we live in today…..or down the road for that matter. It might look different next year, and then again a few years after that. It might look like an owned house in Iowa, or a rental house in Asia where we spend part of our year, or bouncing from place to place like nomads. But home will always be home. Not because of what’s in it, but because of who’s in it.