Home is Not a Place

Home lives in the human experience where moments and stories dwell.

Sometimes home is joy and love, sometimes disappointment and grief; but where one story ends, another always taken its place.

My home began with a sweet mother with a slow, Georgia accent and a father who marched to the beat of his own drum.

As a child, home was a house full of my babysitter’s kids that became my forever family.

Home has also been trips to Georgia where I first witnessed military air shows, a fancy department store called “Rich’s” and a very big rock called Stone Mountain.

Now, home is sisters who stick with me through thick and thin; and a brother who has been there when I needed him most.

Home in my college years was friends who lifted me off the floor when I was too sick to move, chauffeuring me to the emergency room in the dead of night.

Home was and still is the friend who answered the phone and let me talk for hours about my romantic drama, who always offered a shoulder to cry on during my many heartbreaks.

Sometimes home has been a beautiful mountain landscape that begged me to climb it; or an ocean that called to me to find peace in a late day walk on the beach.

Home can a sweet treat – a juicy, yummy peach from a farmer’s market.

Some of my most cherished memories of home have been:

The chubby, outstretched arms of my 9-month-old nephew who wakes after midnight who reaches for me to pick him up;

The words of a 3-year-old nephew who tells me – ‘I love you so much auntie’ that makes my heart want to burst.

The sweet charity of a 9-year-old nephew who offers to warm my hands with his tiny little hands after I come in from the cold complaining of cold hands;

The love felt from holding a newborn niece with long legs that poke out of her swaddling blanket; and

The giggles of an autistic child who doesn’t mind you tickling him.

Home has also been a 200 square foot efficiency that was 500 feet too small, yet it was still a peaceful oasis.

It has been a public bus where I’ve met a single mother that gives thanks for the book I gave her that entertains her chatty, restless child.

Sometimes home has been a park where I’ve met floppy eared friends that greet me with exuberant affection.

Home has been in the heart of a friend who bought me dinner when I had no money to buy it myself; or the church that gave me money for the $200 medication that I desperately needed but couldn’t afford.

And there were times that home was the church that helped me grieve the loss of a beloved parent for whom I will never stop missing.

Home isn’t always happy, but it will always share a lesson; it has filled my life with many well-lived, well-learned and well-loved moments.

For me, home is not a place – it is where I am, where I’ve been and where I plan to go.

Home is where I find peace and joy, and sometimes heartbreak, but always hope.

I’ll never stop experiencing home.