I’ve been gone for three weeks now, two of which were spent away from my wife, and I’m ready to be home! I love traveling, but if it’s not a cool city, I can’t spend more than a few days there without getting anxious to be back in Atlanta. Right now, I’m in the car on my way to Nashville from east Texas, and when I get there, it’s on to ATL. Quite a long drive for one night/morning. Times like this make me question what home really is supposed to be, and I’m reminded of Jon Foreman’s Southbound Train. To quote,
“I’m heading home, but I’m not so sure that home is a place you can still get to by train”
I often find myself thinking that one of the greatest things to ever happen to me was leaving my hometown at the age of 18. Not only because it put me in the deep end of the music pool in Nashville Tennessee, but mainly because it uprooted my idea of home. And I certainly don’t want to sound ungrateful for the people and places I grew up with. I think Donald Miller said it best in one of my favorite books of his, Through Painted Deserts,
“everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons,” {Author’s Note, p. x}
In fact, while we’re on the subject, go ahead and do yourself a favor and drive down to your nearest bookstore and read the entire Author’s Note in that book. You’ll end up reading the whole thing. But I digress…
Sometimes I think if I had never moved, home might still only be a place to me. A little patch of dirt on a little speck of dust tumbling through space. What a tragedy that would be. The older I get, the more I (think I) understand that this is just a temporary housing, where the lease is almost up, and I am ever more thankful for my friends and family, as they are the only home on this earth that I ever want to know. And to Christ, in whom our eternal home rests.
