Home

One word. Multiple meanings.

I don't know about you but the word "home" has meant so many different things to me throughout various seasons of my life.

As a child it meant wherever my family was even if that meant us moving. While I didn't enjoy that, it would still be home because of the people I was with. As a teenager "home" was where I slept, ate, talked with my family, and had pool parties with cousins but church felt more like home than home did. I started to recognize that the peers, mentors, and youth leaders in my life were spiritual brothers and sisters! They walked through hard things with me and it felt safe; a different sort of home than I was experiencing at that time. As a young adult "home" meant the new big city of Chicago I resided in for four years with countless different roommates who shared in so much of life, learning, growing, and discovering with me. As an adult it meant moving to another state 3,000 miles away from my California home and starting a real job with real co-workers and renting an apartment on a lake with women I didn't know.

And I can't forget about how I've left my heart in so many countries that it's hard to not consider those places somewhat like home too. Especially when you've been to multiple countries multiple times and have seen the same people year after year.

Because my home on this earth is constantly changing, locationally and physically, I have had to learn to root my meaning of the word "home" in the Lord and wherever He has me in any given season. Nothing stays the same for forever and as someone who dislikes change a lot this concept can be hard for me. But the one thing that has always stayed constant and never changed, even when my surroundings have, is the Lord. While the deeper root is the Lord, there's another aspect to "home" I'd still like to point out.

Home is where friends that feel like family are.

Home is where I am known and I am getting to know others.

Home is the specific people He has placed in my life for this season.

Home is where I am serving, investing, doing ministry, and discipling.

Home is where roommates know my schedule more than my mom (ha).

Home is wherever I can fully be myself and rest in the fact that I am still fully loved.

Home is where family members are just a phone call away because we live in 5 states.

I recently just bought a townhouse in the city I currently live in and as I think back to all of the places I have called home, this home means something entirely different to me. I am in the same city, the same state, attending the same church with all my same people I do life with, and yet my home is a place the Father has given me as a gift.

My walls, kitchen, dining room, attached garage, wood burning fireplace, quaint patio, two bedroom, one bathroom home is mine. Okay, ultimately it's the Lord's but you get the idea.

I have a home.

I get to create a home.

I can invite others into my home.

I can make this home feel like a home to others.

So, I am doing the only thing I know how to do. Offering this back up to the Lord. Surrendering. Thanking Him for the gracious gift and giving it back to Him to use however He chooses.

If I've learned one thing during this entire process it's that I trust His heart for me. Not because He gave me what I prayed for but because that in-between space no one else sees or hears about...He met me there.

He met me in my doubts.

He met me in my tears.

He met me in my anger and frustration.

He met me in the night when the moon shone on my face through my white curtains.

I trust His heart for me because of who He is in those spaces; not for the gift of the answered prayers. Because even if He had not answered it in the way I hoped, He would still be good and His heart for me would still be good.

This goes back to His unchanging nature and character and how I define "home." He has already started writing this story with my new home and me. You're invited into it with me. And you already have a room ;)