Used to, I couldn’t imagine having a home apart from my parents’ house.

I remember the morning of my wedding, lying in my bed in my old bedroom, and thinking, “This is it. Everything changes today.”

And it did. I wasn’t being melodramatic. It was one of my life’s first great shifts, and I was aware enough of the moment to appreciate it for what it was.

My college dorm and apartment were never home. They were always temporary situations. I knew where I would return, where I would always be welcome, and where I could find rest and comfort.

Since then, I’ve lived in a variety of houses that have become homes. My original home is now the “homeplace,” as we are fond of saying in the South. The memories attached to it will always be precious to me, but I’ve grown comfortable with the process and the necessity of growing into new homes.

A new home doesn’t happen overnight. Anyone can make a move, and anyone can build a house, but the transformation into making a house a home is often a gradual process that is more emotional than physical. It is more than a relationship with a building, with your objects, with your stuff. 

It is more than any saying you could find at Hobby Lobby to hang on your wall, amidst all the other clutter you’ve managed to collect.

Home is where our people are. Home is strewn, oddball socks on the floor from our children’s grubby feet. Home is dirty dishes in the sink and the lingering smell of bacon grease from Saturday morning’s breakfast shared with a loved one. Home is little wadded-up dust bunnies from our fur babies’ shedding hair. Home is a stack of papers that you will get to clearing later, but right now, it’s time to go outside and play catch with your kid. 

I’m currently writing on the porch of what is my fifth home. A rain shower is pattering on the tin roof, and the potted flowers are filling out with bright color. Songbirds are chirping from their nested homes in the trees. The sunlight gleams through the rain. If I were to look to the sky, I would find a rainbow somewhere.

Rains come. Change happens. And when it does, whether for happy reasons or heartbreaking ones, our homes shift. We must hold lightly to memory, or else we lose ourselves in the past and stifle the forward progress on which our lives are meant to continue.

For all of you out there who are experiencing showers of blessing or storms of hardship. I pray you find your rainbow. Your home has shifted and will never be the same. The change can be so great to endure that you seek out a new home, one where the old memories aren’t so overwhelming.

When the past swells over us, and the present is too painful to endure, we look to the future. 

It is a comfort to me that, one day, the necessity of a new home will come. It will be a better home than I’ve ever known on this earth. My mission here will be complete. This place is just temporary, more like a dank college dorm room where I have to stay while I suffer through lectures and lessons.

But graduation day is coming, and when it does, I hope I am not sad to leave, for I know where I am going, and I know Who is there, waiting for me:

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”

John 17:24

It will be my last move, the best one too, to a home where the circle will never be unbroken.

It is a place where I will be welcomed and have the ultimate in rest and comfort.

A reward? It’s nice to think about, but not necessary.

Being Home will be enough.

And if there are oddball socks scattered in my heavenly abode, well, that will be even better.