It happens to me every. single. time.
A visit to my childhood home approaches and I grow homesick.
Home. Sick.
The closer the trip becomes, the more my heart aches.
It’s been twelve years since I lived in America.
You’d think that the longer I am away, the easier it would become.
But hardships and revelations and babies and friendships make that impossible.
Instead, the ache grows.
I know what it’s like to be a foreigner. To live as an alien in a land not my own.
I know what it means to put roots down and be home, and yet not really home.
As much as the ache aches, it’s also my gift.
Reminding me that I’m not Home. Reminding me that there is More.
My home is in Him.
Homesick for heaven… Homesick for a place I don’t know, and yet know so well.
Sometimes I think it’s the lack of belonging, that hard-to-pinpoint knowing of yes, here I fit.
But I will never really fit.
I realize it’s more than a circumstance, a feeling, an address, a season.
It’s heaven. It’s Him.
I’m homesick for Him.
My home is in Him.
STOP.
Q for you: Are you homesick? A foreigner living in a “strange” land? Is this you, too? What do you do with the ache?
Love,
A
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April 24th, 2012 at 12:33 am
I cont speak to your homesickness for heaven but I can speak somewhat to your homesickness for America. I lived in the UK for nine years and was desperately homesick. I was tired of being the foreigner and the alien in their land. We moved to the US and now my husband is the foreigner and the alien but so am I. I have changed so much from living abroad that I no longer belong here either. Perhaps it is heaven I long for because it is the only place I am ever likely to be that I hope I will feel like I belong.
P.S. I am now homesick for England while here in the US and homesick for my hometown in Maine while here in Texas.
April 24th, 2012 at 10:50 pm
Mmmmm, yes. I think if we were to move to America I’d feel the same way. But perhaps that thing is always there? Perhaps it really is a homesickness for an “other” life, beyond? Heaven. 🙂
April 25th, 2012 at 6:35 pm
I literally got tears in my eyes reading this. It totally echoes my heart. Not only because heaven keeps filling up with people I know – old friends who have joined my two sweet babies and grandparents, but because I also know that this place isn’t IT. And my heart knows that. Sometimes we get so caught up in everyday tasks that we forget where are hearts truly belong. I am guilty of this much of the time. Thanks for writing this – it is truly beautiful!
April 26th, 2012 at 11:21 pm
Yes, friend. I’m guilty too. It’s the ache that reminds me. So maybe the ache is actually Grace?
xo
April 28th, 2012 at 7:04 pm
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April 29th, 2012 at 6:59 am
Oh, I love this. And I have to admit, there are still times, even after being “home” in America for nearly 4 years, that I still have that ache in my heart for Australia. But I know that deep down the ache comes from living in a community of believers that, to me, was a little taste of what we have to look forward to in Heaven.
April 30th, 2012 at 9:05 pm
Yes, that makes perfect sense Alicia. 🙂