Coming Home?

It’s been a little over a year since we moved back from Spain. It was the only home my boys had known. It was the place we had become a family of four, the place we called home.

So what does it mean to come home when you’ve lived overseas? You’re actually leaving your home to come back to a place that remembers you as you used to be not who are you now. Think square peg in a round hole-not comfortable.

Our three years in Spain weren’t easy. I had a baby our first year, then postpartum our second and then lived through a pandemic our third year. We like to pack in the fun. Despite those things we left a part of ourselves in Spain. We wept when we left our friends, our home, our familiar places. But we both knew we need to come back to the States to regroup, change sending organizations, and let God heal our hearts.

Many people asked us, “Aren’t you glad you’re home?” Or they would ask our family members in front of us, “Aren’t you glad you have them back?” How do you I even begin to explain how weird this question is? I’m not mad at people for asking it because it was coming from a place of care but they didn’t understand what we had experienced. You don’t know what you don’t know.

We weren’t home. We had left our home. What is home? As much as I’ve been processing this question, my kids have had to process this too. My oldest especially has felt this tension asking questions like, “When are we gonna move to our home, Dada?” while we were living with my mother in law when we first came back. Kids understand more than we give them credit for.

My friend gave me a magnet that had this saying on it:

This “place” will change. Although it will physically change, wherever we live we can make a home, haven for family. Wherever we live we make a home when we are safe for one another and our children, when we are loving and offer hospitality, and when we care for the space we are in. The question of what “home” is becomes easier when we look outside of our things and our physical dwellings. So much of our Western mentality says you have to have things in order to be ok. Is that really what we need though? Or do these things just give us something to control when our worlds are out of control?

Sometimes things give us a sense of stability and that’s not wrong. I want to be more aware of the things that might give my kids stability amidst transition moving forward. More importantly I want to give my kids a safe place no matter where we live where they can express their emotion. So what is home? Home is family. Home is settling no matter where we are or how long we’re there for. Home is a safe place.