What are you homesick for?

With scraps of wood from the pine that lines the ceiling of our new addition, Dan and I fashioned a house number sign. Now, if we need to find our way home, the address is hanging beneath the light fixture just to the left of the garage door.

 

It was Maya Angelou who said:

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

I’ve been homesick a few times. Once was when I spent several months in a convent in Germany—not in training to become a nun, but as part of a small community of young women from around the world who lived and worked there.

I was assigned to die nahestube because I knew how to sew. And while those months constituted an amazing and life-changing experience, there were bouts of homesickness.

In that season, I learned that I could be far from my family but if I leaned in close to God’s heart, I was at home. Home is where the Father is.

St. Augustine addresses the most deep-seated longing of the human heart in this familiar statement:

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

What are you homesick for? Peace? Purpose? Belonging? Meaningful friendship? It’s all wrapped up in relationship with our Creator who made us for Himself.

Interestingly, during my widow years—at a time when I was quite content—there were a few puzzling episodes of something that felt like homesickness, like longing for home.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I think God was preparing me for this lovely place where I now reside as a later-in-life bride with a new husband and new purpose.

There’s an ancient proverb that goes like this:

By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures. – Proverbs 24:3-4

We’re still in Dan’s fifth wheel trailer as the refurbishing of our house is almost complete. This temporary space is filled with peace and laughter and good food and cuddling and old Western movies and important discussions while sipping homemade Chai tea, like what we should do for Friday date night..

There are rare and beautiful treasures in this trailer, and we’ll move them with us into our renovated house as soon as we get the ‘all clear’ from our contractor. (Any day now, hopefully before Christmas.)

And now we have house numbers to help us find our way there.

Except we don’t really need help finding our way home, because home is where Dan and I are together, and where the Father is.