The question, “where are you from?” has always given me a
little anxiety.
Whenever I’m asked this question, without fail, my hands sweat,
the hairs on my neck stiffen, and my mouth dries. Words stick to the roof of my
mouth like cotton balls. What is a military kid to say? Do I launch into a
defensive diatribe about how growing up, I never really lived in one place for more
than three years? In junior high, in fact, I attended four different schools in
three different cities.
Sure, I got to see the world as a kid. In fact, by the time
I was twelve, I lived in Washington, Texas, Oklahoma, California, and Germany.
Before I even stumbled my way through middle school, I had traveled my way
through much of Europe. Living abroad enlarged my worldview, certainly. In some
ways, I experienced more of the world in my childhood than many experience in a
lifetime. And for that I am forever thankful.
But even after my dad retired from the Army (after serving
in both Vietnam and Desert Storm), I was shuffled around by parents’ divorces
and remarriages and promotions. And for that I am forever wistful.
I’m wistful of people like my husband who grew up in the
same house, with the same set of parents, and with the same neighborhood,
childhood friends (all of whom attended our wedding). When people ask him where
he’s from, he can answer without hesitation and with full confidence. He has
roots; he has a history. I, on the other hand, have more or less floated—or
maybe fled—from city to city and country to country most of my life, piece-milling
my experiences into a slovenly woven tapestry, one that doesn’t always make
sense or connect. That my husband is a product of unwavering stability was arguably what most attracted me to him during our dating relationship. Thirteen
years later, maybe it still is.
At 27, when I reached 3 years and 1 day of living in Waco,
TX, it was the longest I had lived anywhere in my entire life. So when San
Diego came calling, after 6 years of living in Waco, I was more devastated than
I was anything else. But I didn’t want my need for a permanent home to
overshadow my husband’s insatiable need to run unencumbered toward adventure,
advancement, accomplishment…
Wandering through the desert in search of water—anything to
quench my parched soul—is the best way I know to describe my 3 years in San
Diego. The land was so foreign to me (in the most figurative an literal sense
of the word foreign), and I reached out for anything that felt like “home.”
There wasn’t much to grasp, and I really tried my best to nest alongside the
ocean, amongst like-minded believers and fellow academics. I bore my two
babies—three if you count the dissertation I finished just weeks after my
second son’s birth. I taught full time as an Assistant Professor at a Christian
University… until just weeks before the birth of my second. My soul was dry and
my heart was weary.
But I was loved. A church family brought me refreshment when
I had given up hope of finding any. When I pined for home and rejected solace
in the land, they loved me still. And for that I am forever indebted.
And God was gracious; oh, how He was gracious.
I defied professional wisdom when I declined to renew my
contract in order to be home with my two babies. But God saw my faithfulness,
and he honored my obedience. He brought unique opportunities: I was able to
assist an anti-human trafficking organization align curriculum and state
standards; I presented my dissertation at two major conferences at Biola and
Pepperdine; I published an article in a respectable scholarly journal, all
while being my boys’ full time everything.
When God made a way back to Texas—to Waco, in fact—we took
it. But the thing is, saying yes to coming home was not nearly as easy as I
imagined it would be.
For three years, I was so busy laboring under the California
sun—laboring babies and dissertations, over student papers and in conference
presentations, laboring at building new friendships and exploring the lay of
the land…
Only, somewhere in my toil and in my pain, my labor birthed
a new love. I fell in love with the very thing that tore me to pieces, that nearly bled me to death, and placed in my arms a weight too heavy for me to hold. Somewhere
at the end of the journey, when the bleeding subsided, and my heart cured, and
the weight and I became mutually dependent, I stopped looking so far in. I
looked up and out and around me for the first time in a long time, and I
realized I had indeed fallen in love with this foreign land and its foreign
people. In the most inexplicable way, the pain from of all that laboring birthed
a love far deeper than “home” could have.
I’m home now. And it feels exactly like I thought it would:
familiar, safe, comforting-- the same as when I left. Everything is the same— everything except for
me. Everything is the same except for my heart and all those people and dreams
and accomplishments and babies for which I labored so hard. Those places in my
heart are wholly and perhaps even holy different.
And if I’ve learned anything from my last three years it is
this: it’s not where you live but how you live that matters.
I’m thankful to be home. I’m thankful to be changed. I’m
thankful a piece of my heart is here, but that a piece of my heart is still
there. If home is where the heart is, then I want my heart to be large enough
to reside in many places with the great many people it loves.
