“Where is your home?”

Hmmmmm…

Arizona, Texas, Russia, Greece, Macedonia, Alaska – take your pick!

I often struggle when answering this question. Is it Arizona, the state where I was born?  Or Alaska, the place where I spent my youth, met my husband and began married life? After 22 years of ministering overseas as a cross-cultural worker, I’ve called multiple countries home. Is the correct answer my passport country, or the country where I currently live?

For the last half of my life, I’ve lived in strange places where I felt like I didn’t belong. When I returned to America, I didn’t fit in and longed for my overseas home. When I lived overseas, I missed America.

Living between cultures messed with my mind each time I moved.

A simple example. In Greece, I quickly learned that stop signs were optional. Yes, you read that correctly. Optional. As long as no one was driving through the intersection, you didn’t need to stop. Once, I spaced out and braked at the stop sign, and narrowly escaped being rear-ended by the car behind me. I learned several new hand gestures and words as the irate driver bawled me out for stopping. Unfortunately, upon my return to America, I ran several stop signs before I remembered I wasn’t in Greece anymore. It seemed I was doomed to live between two worlds.

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”   Miriam Adeney

I struggled with the concept of home for years.

 Home is where the heart is.

There’s no place like home.

 Home sweet home.

Or one of my favorites:

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. “ Robert Frost

(Children of mine, remember this saying when old age and senility overtake me, and I come knocking at your door.)

One day, God tenderly reminded me, as a believer in Christ, my home is in heaven with Him. I recalled the lyrics of a hymn my mom often asked me to play. It was one of her favorites in spite of my bad playing.

 This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.

My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.

The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door

And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

At last, my heart comprehended why I’m not at home in this world.

So, I’m learning to flourish in the places God has planted me on this earth, in this place and season of life, eagerly looking forward to my heavenly home. My heart’s home.

I hope you join me on this blog as I continue to travel the road that lies before me. Come along on this journey and find encouragement as we walk side by side along the path, laugh at stories about my crazy life, and learn together how to be content where God has placed us.