Longing for Home

I've lived in 3 countries, 5 states, and 15 houses (I think - I lose track of the houses). I spent my very first birthday flying to Bangladesh to begin a new life there. Before I moved here to Washington state, the longest I lived in any one place was five years.

I'm not very good at answering the question, "Where are you from?"

My first passport needed extra pages

As a child, home was a fluid reality. While we lived overseas, we spent every second or third summer back in the United States, traveling around to visit family and friends. "Let's go home now," we would say at the end of some restaurant dinner - this meant, "let's get back to our motel room". Home was not tied to a particular place. It meant any spot in which my family safely sheltered together.

My home was Kenya when I graduated from high school, and I left my family there to begin college in Illinois. Although the advent of email brought them a little closer, they were still far removed - I returned only twice in two years. When I left Nairobi at the end of Christmas break my sophomore year, I knew that my family would be packing everything up and following me in the summer. I strained to look out the window as my plane lifted off from Jomo Kenyatta Airport, realizing that Kenya would never be my home again, that I might never return.

The second semester of my sophomore year was a dark time for me. Difficult things pressed in on me, and I was homeless. There was no safe place to retreat to, nowhere I felt loved and sheltered. It was during this period that I began to think about what home meant to me, and to yearn for it. I took long walks and gazed at other people's front windows, imagining the warm spaces that might be within, imagining that I was safe and welcome. I sang the Michael Card song "Home" to myself, and longed for a place to leave the darkness outside.

Home is a comfort, and home is a light
A place to leave the darkness outside.
Home is a pleasant and ever-full feeling;
A place where the soul safely hides.
   -Michael Card, "Home"

Mercifully, my family settled in my college town that summer. They were gifted with a year of low-cost missionary housing right on the edge of campus, a house with a light-filled bedroom that became mine. I didn't have to gaze into windows any more, because I was inside. I was safely home again.

* * * * *
This sense of home as refuge, no matter where it is found, remains strong in me. I now find shelter in my husband's embrace, and being with him is, in some ways, home for me. But not completely. As I continue to mature and develop (and move), I realize that finding sanctuary is not the same as belonging, and I long for both.

I'm a third culture kid (TCK), which means that for a large chunk of my growing-up, I was raised in cultures that didn't match my passport. One of the common characteristics of TCKs like me is "cultural homelessness". Even though we quickly adapt to and function in a new culture, we belong to none. After almost two decades of living in the United States, this culture is still foreign to me. I often feel like a participant-observer, peering in from the outside. Even when I am welcome and included, I don't belong.

Cultural homelessness makes frequent moving easier, even desirable. There are no deep roots to rip up. No decades-long relationships to disrupt. If you've never belonged, it's not that hard to leave. And there's always the excitement of a new place, new beginnings, and new adventure ahead.

But there's a dark side. If you live in a place more than a few years and remain a participant-observer, a terrible loneliness sets in. It hurts to not belong. Our souls long for home.

We've now lived here in western Washington for eight years, smashing my previous record. We have no plans to move. It has not been easy. Staying put for this long has forced me to face my soul's yearning for home. I'm learning that if I want to be inside a circle, I have to find the courage to step in, reach out my hands, and trust that there's a place there for me. I'm learning to see my friendships here as long-term, and to invest in them accordingly. And I'm learning from my children.

Over the threshold! Our home for eight years now and counting.

After we lived here a year, I made an ill-conceived April Fool's joke about moving back to Arizona. My two older children burst into tears, and I felt terrible. I had always felt more excited than sad about moving, and for the first time, I realized that my children were different. They have a home, and it's more than just their family. It's here, in this house, in this town, in this state. Only my oldest son remembers living somewhere else, and only in snapshots. My children know where they're from, and they're teaching me what it's like to belong somewhere.

I receive fleeting glimpses of what it feels like to belong to a place, to find home in a location: Grief rather than anticipation during a vivid dream that we have to move. Profound relief when I awaken and realize we can remain here. A quiver of joy as I gaze at the Olympic mountains from the ferry deck after a vacation and they look like old friends, delighted to see me return.

I never anticipated that my life's journey might offer me the gift of rootedness. I'm slowly finding the courage to open my hands and receive it.

Those are "our" mountains now. They welcome us home.

* * * * *
And yet...there's a paradox. As I stretch my roots down into Washington soil, I find that the other places I lived also rooted themselves in my soul. They fill my dreams and they return to me in odd moments. Monsoon rains in Bangladesh; the prairie trail in Illinois; salt marshes in Georgia; wisteria in North Carolina; never-ending skies in Kenya; locust trees tapping on our windows in Pennsylvania; desert evenings in Arizona - all of these are home to me. All are pieces of where I belong and are wrapped up in my longing.

One of my favorite children's books is "Grandfather's Journey" by Allen Say. Through lovely watercolors and spare, lyrical prose, it tells the story of the author's grandfather, who grew up in Japan and immigrated to the United States. I'm unable to read the last couple pages of the book aloud without choking up: "I return now and then, when I cannot still the longing in my heart. The funny thing is, the moment I am in one country, I am homesick for the other." This is my story, too, except that sometimes I'm homesick for a place that both includes and goes beyond all my homes.

I believe that one day, my heart's longings will be filled. One day, I will perfectly belong and will find the home my soul yearns for. And I wonder: will all those places that shaped me, all that diverse beauty that lives in me - will all that be a part of eternity? I hope so.

Nobody tells you, when you get born here
How much you'll come to love it and how you'll never belong here.
So I'll call you my country, and I'll keep longing for my home.
I with that I could take you there with me.
   -Rich Mullins, "Land of My Sojourn"