Home

(We made it across the tightrope!  It was better, and harder, than we expected...  and I am finding it very difficult to write directly about what happened, so I'm coming at it sideways.  I'm working my way through Making Manifest, a fantastic book about creativity and the Creator by Dave Harrity.  This post is a response to one of the writing exercises in the book)

Home.  This is a word that has very complex layers of meaning for me.

Due to many reasons, I didn't often feel at home during my childhood.  My happy memories are of places within the houses I lived in, rather than with the people I lived with.

Then I left my home, and my family, and after a few months of wandering, my new church became my home.  I was there whenever it was open, and the people in it embraced me - I had a new family.

My next home was my husband.  I had never known anyone to delight in me as he did, and together he and God became my home.  We multiplied ourselves four times, and our house became much louder and busier.  Time in the home of our own company became very rare and treasured.

Now I live in a house that is also my home, on land that feels like home, with my husband-home and my family - it is all home!  Whenever we come back from a trip away my whole family wanders around our home, delighting that we are back again.  It's not a fancy house - it isn't even completely finished, despite seven years of living in it - but it is home to all of us.

And yet... I've just been home.  Home to the people who lived in my childhood houses.  And despite almost two decades of not seeing them, they are still home.  They are familiar to me in a way that no one else is - I see their childhood likenesses in their own children, and I realise that I can see my parents in myself.

The door that I pushed open to escape through, had been barred tightly shut.  They opened it for my family to come through for a few hours... and then tried to slam it shut again, but I still had my foot in the doorway.  So they and we talked through the slender opening that was left, we touched each others faces and tried to memorize each others voices, because we knew it would be many years, if ever, before we saw one another again.

And then the door was shut - gently, but very firmly, leaving me and my little family on the outside.  We each cried, on our own sides of the wall that they are sure needs to be there.

Now I am back in my home, with my husband and children, but my heart is not quite all back here yet... I think some part of it may be waiting still, by the wall.  Waiting and hoping that the door might open again, just a sliver.