Well, another school year is over and that means one thing: it's time to pack up all of my belongings, again. So yesterday I did just that. I packed up all my clothes, shoes, books, bedding, electronics, and any other random objects that appeared in my room throughout the year. Looking at my side of the room, it looked fairly empty. My roommate still had her belongings there, but all of my worldly objects were now in boxes and suitcases. As I took my boxes to the car with the help of a few good friends, I thought about what moving all this stuff meant. I was going home. Or was I? I grew up in what I thought was a large midwestern city in the middle of fields of wheat. That was home. In that town, I learned to walk, I learned to ride a bike, I made friends there. I even had a job waiting for me there. My parents, sister, and brother were there. My church family was there. Yes, that was home. But then, what did I consider the place I was living? The place where I had now lived for nearly two years, excepting the summer months. Here, I had also made friends. I lived with a wonderful roommate, and I had a job here too. I learned how to live on my own here. I learned how to stay up late into the night working on homework and still manage to make my 8 a.m. classes. Here, I learned that sometimes, I had to make decisions that weren't always easy. Here, I learned that God is infinitely more powerful and strong than I am, and that I can get through anything with Him by my side. Even with my posters of singers and bands gone from the walls of my room and some of my friends missing, this felt like home, too.
I have been thinking about the concept of "home" for a few months now, but I think I finally "get" it. I read a book earlier this year called Words. In the book, one of the characters says, "Maybe home is a feeling." If home is a feeling, what feeling is it? To further explore the idea, I thought about songs about "home." There are numerous songs about "home." For instance, there's "Home" by one of my favorite artists in the world, Michael Bublé. "I wanna go home," he says in the song. He talks about how home is where his girlfriend is. Well, taking that idea into account, home is where there are people whom I love. But I love people from my college town and from the city in which I grew up. Then there's "This is Home" by my all-time favorite band, Switchfoot. They wrote it for the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian movie. It says, "This is home. I'm finally where I belong." So their words invoke a meaning where a sense of belonging makes a person feel they are "home." To further confuse my wanderings about the idea of "home," there's the idea of a "home church." When filling out scholarship information and information about myself at a Christian college, I often come across the phrase. I believe my home church is in the town I grew up in, so does that mean my "home" is where I grew up? Church feels homey... I know most people there, I help out there, I grow in my faith there. It invokes some of the same feelings I feel when I think about the other two places I've mentioned.
As I sit in my bedroom for the first time since Easter, which granted was only two weekends ago, I feel "home." I feel loved here. I feel like this is where I can relax. Yet anyone who's been around me in the past few weeks knows I've been talking about the mountains almost non-stop. It's just about all I can think of. This may sound odd, but I feel "at home" there too. In the mountains, I feel relaxed. I feel God's presence and love fill me when I'm there. It's another home of mine. Granted, I don't go there very often, but when I do, it's like I'm going back to old friends. This idea that "home" is a physical place may seem more logical, but I'm inclined to believe it's the feeling. After all, I could own a home in Texas, but I wouldn't call it "home" because I've never been to Texas, and the only people I know from Texas I met at school and know from school. I have nothing to associate with a house in Texas. No memories, no family, no friends (since I'm considering my friends from Texas friends from college instead). It's just a place. But here, in my "large" midwestern city, I have those things. That's what makes me feel like I'm home and that's what makes me feel like I'm home at college too: I have friends, people I love, and memories associated with the two places.
With that in mind, I'd like to leave you with yet another quote: "Home is where the Heart is." Mine is in a small town surrounded by cornfields and a "large" one surrounded by wheat. I guess I left home for... home.
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