Home has meant so many things as I have grown. It has meant my childhood home across the street from my grandmother. The one where my first dog, Bart Starr, slept with me every night. The train went by each evening right around bedtime. Then it was across town, in the place that I got my first room to myself. I painted it blue. Then it was my house on Crombie. The place my parents and sister still reside. Where I went from being a child to being something more. Then there was my college campus. Where I craved and devoured book after book. Where the rhythmic tapping of papers getting typed, kept the seconds. Where life long friends were made and where each inch became familiar to me. The smells and faces were seared into my being for four years. It was my best friend’s home when I needed refuge and my home now, where I live at with my new friends and we test the waters of life together.
Now home means the place I am leaving. I for a moment tasted my permanent home. Singing songs of praise, joining in prayer as the Body, exploring creation, encouraging one another, sharing meals, making art and learning more and more about God. This was a taste of the home I was made for. Now with the bump of the road, dark clouds on the horizon, and camp behind me I want to weep. A part of me is missing. The issue with homesickness it that it is me longing for heaven. I will never escape it til Christ embraces me and I Him. I have tasted creation, imitated my maker with the labor of my hands and my lips have sang of his goodness. I have been surrendered by other children of the same Father and have been blessed by them. They have prayed and fought darkness by my side. The pit in my stomach grows with the distance. I will go back home, but it is less like the home I was designed for. Less like camp. It is less like my heavenly home where we will share testimonies by the fire.
Or is it ? What keeps me from those things from being in my life outside of camp?
On This Side. 