Where Home Really is
We've all heard it said that "home is where the heart is."
In my loneliest moments, crying on my bathroom floor, the cry of my heart has been I want to go home. It didn't matter where I was. It didn't have much to do with who was with me. I wanted to feel home.
There's more to home than where our heart is. Our heart can be anywhere. I know my heart has been with the wrong people before. It's been focused on the wrong things before. My heart has been wrong before. My heart is wrong a lot.
Our hearts are fickle. They change so often, especially as teenagers. We think we know what we're doing, we think we know what we want. But things change and suddenly what we thought we knew is gone; what we wanted is broken. In the last year I feel like I've watched person after person get exactly what I wanted. It's broken my heart again and again.
If our home is where our heart is, our home is on fragile ground.
When I started writing this, I was coming to the conclusion that home is just the place, the people with whom we belong. That's isn't necessarily wrong, but it's still unstable. I've lost friends, people I felt I belonged with to, time or miscommunication or a complete lack of communication. Friend groups drift apart. Maybe that's not true 100% of the time, but for me that's been the reality most of the time.
So in those moments, when I'm crying out for home, what is it I want? Yes, I want people to belong with, friends who won't leave me. But what I really need is truth.
A few weeks ago, I started believing lies. Lies that I didn't belong, that I didn't deserve to serve my youth group, that who I was wasn't good enough for what God needed from me. I feared that my words, spoken and written, wouldn't be enough
Home is a place that ought to be secure. A place we can go when everything else falls apart. Where can we run? Where is our hiding place when the battle isn't ours?
"If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
In my loneliest moments, crying on my bathroom floor, the cry of my heart has been I want to go home. It didn't matter where I was. It didn't have much to do with who was with me. I wanted to feel home.
There's more to home than where our heart is. Our heart can be anywhere. I know my heart has been with the wrong people before. It's been focused on the wrong things before. My heart has been wrong before. My heart is wrong a lot.
Our hearts are fickle. They change so often, especially as teenagers. We think we know what we're doing, we think we know what we want. But things change and suddenly what we thought we knew is gone; what we wanted is broken. In the last year I feel like I've watched person after person get exactly what I wanted. It's broken my heart again and again.
If our home is where our heart is, our home is on fragile ground.
When I started writing this, I was coming to the conclusion that home is just the place, the people with whom we belong. That's isn't necessarily wrong, but it's still unstable. I've lost friends, people I felt I belonged with to, time or miscommunication or a complete lack of communication. Friend groups drift apart. Maybe that's not true 100% of the time, but for me that's been the reality most of the time.
So in those moments, when I'm crying out for home, what is it I want? Yes, I want people to belong with, friends who won't leave me. But what I really need is truth.
A few weeks ago, I started believing lies. Lies that I didn't belong, that I didn't deserve to serve my youth group, that who I was wasn't good enough for what God needed from me. I feared that my words, spoken and written, wouldn't be enough
Home is a place that ought to be secure. A place we can go when everything else falls apart. Where can we run? Where is our hiding place when the battle isn't ours?
|| "He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart." -Psalm 91:4 ||
Rampart is usually a word we only hear in the national anthem. What it is is the first defensive wall around a castle. God's faithfulness is our first defense, the castle wall, and our last defense, the shield we carry.
This year, the most heartbreaking of my life so far, has been held together by one thing: faithfulness. When I was angry at God, I still held on to the truth that He is God, and He is good.
God's faithfulness is where my hope is fulfilled, where my courage is found, where my confidence stands. where the grace I so desperately need is found. Home is not where the heart is, where we slip and lose and fall without a light.
Home is in the steadfast defense of the Father's faithfulness.
Thank you for sharing this, Hadley.
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