Homesick

Rosalyn Lackey, Administrative Assistant for Adult Spiritual Formation, offered this outstanding devotion at our staff meeting last week. I hope you find it as meaningful as we did. - Chip


As human beings, we generally prefer for our world to make sense. So, as the world seems to spin out of control, our emperors have no clothes, and my cognitive dissonance makes me question my sanity, I find myself thinking more often of home. Home was a place that made sense. A place that I trusted. A place that was safe.

I’ve lived in different houses, in different cities, yet, when I think of home, I still think of the house I grew up in on Briarcliff Road in Atlanta.

Robert Frost wrote in The Death of the Hired Man, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Now, almost more than ever, I miss that home – and the loved ones who I knew would always take me in.
I had a fairly happy, uncomplicated childhood and adolescence, and though my family was not “normal” compared to other families, my friends always loved to come to my house. And why not? We had a big house, I was the only child, and I had the whole upstairs to myself.

My parents were older when I was born, and my father was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when I was two. I can vaguely remember him negotiating a walker, but he was in a wheelchair most of the 17 years I had with him. He also had trouble with his speech, which was hard for others to understand. He was determined not to embarrass me during my self-conscious teen years and, therefore, did not interact with my friends (or boyfriends) very often. In many ways, it was like growing up with a single mom. But within our close-knit family of three, we managed to laugh a lot, and I knew that I was heard, and loved, and safe.

My father died when I was 17, two weeks before I went off to the University of Georgia. Eight years later, my mother remarried a wonderful man and she and my stepfather lived in that same house on Briarcliff Road until she died in 2003.

It was quite an undertaking to have to clean out and sell that big house by myself. It was full of memories, family antiques, and everything under the sun. I filled up a construction dumpster trailer that was placed in the driveway. I ended up selling the house to a wonderful young family who still lives there 19 years later, and that gives me some peace.

The Reverend Beth Brown at Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland, CA wrote the following in a weblog:

“In Frederick Buechner’s book The Longing for Home, he talks about our childhood “home” and how for each of us it is different, depending upon where we most felt at home. If our parents didn’t provide a stable and warm home, maybe it was our grandparents or our best friend’s home. Regardless, he describes how we spend a great deal of our lives feeling homesick for either the home we had or the home we never had and for which we still long. At some point in our lives, however, we realize we have reached an age where there is no going back and at that point our longing takes on a different character. We long to be wholly loved and our longing becomes a longing for an eternal home.”

Frederick Buechner himself wrote:

“If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, and beauty is as close as breathing, and is crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what all of us hunger for above all other things, even when we don't know its name or realize that it's what we're starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis, a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.”

As I mentioned, I find myself feeling homesick more often these days. I used to think that homesickness was a weakness, but I wonder if feeling homesick is part of God's plan. Homesick for a place you’ve never seen... homesick for the people (and animals) you love who are already there... homesick for a day when no one will get sick or die... homesick for peace of mind, for love and laughter, and for no more tears.

The Bible says in John 14:1-4:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to where I am going.”

Let us pray:
Heavenly Father, thank you for the home that is waiting for us on the other end of this life’s journey. And even though feeling homesick sometimes hurts, thank you for planting those small seeds of homesickness in our hearts, so that we can experience a deep longing for our true home. Please help us to learn to live with a longing for that home, while continuing to deepen our relationship with you each day. Amen.