Day Eighteen: Home
I've been raiding our local library, and this week enjoyed Kate DiCamillo's Flora & Ulysses. It was a sweet and quirky book, and it got me thinking more about home…and what home means, especially when we're between places and relationships and jobs. Especially, perhaps, when we're between different versions of ourselves.
I don't want to write about the book (but I loved it, and you will too). I just want to say this, to those of us in between right now:
It's okay to feel unmoored and lost and nameless in this time. It's okay. Who you are right now is okay.
Because what if "home" was not so much a place or a relationship or a job but a sense of being, a knowing of ourselves and our place in the world?
And what if, instead of rushing through the between to get to the other side, to get to "settled" and "stable" and "comfortable", we accepted that this time is moving us from one version of ourselves to the next?
What if we let "home" develop within us as we wait for this new self to blossom into fruition?
What if we allowed ourselves the grace to hold on to those who are "home" to us, the ones who know our hearts, the ones who call us by name? What if we held on without apology, acknowledging our need for them?
What if we were honest? About the good and the bad, acknowledging that someone else may be in the between right now and need our words to speak into their lives from our place of uprootedness to theirs?
Because it's okay. It's okay to not feel ourselves yet. We are in the between times. In many ways, we are, right now, the between itself. Between houses. Between friends. Between stages in our lives. Between jobs. Between churches.
Between the ending of something and the beginning of something else.
Between the introduction and the first chapter.
Between knowing who we were and knowing who we're becoming.
It's okay.
As we are in the between, may we find those who are home to us, even if they are half a world away, and invite them into the changing space that we occupy and let them love us and let them be between with us so that no matter how long it takes, this in between, this rearranging of soul and space and spirit, we rest in the home that they are for us.
Because at the heart of the matter, we all just want to be called by name and we all want to go home.
And the secret is: we're already on the way home, no matter how long it takes, and Someone knows your name.
I don't want to write about the book (but I loved it, and you will too). I just want to say this, to those of us in between right now:
It's okay to feel unmoored and lost and nameless in this time. It's okay. Who you are right now is okay.
And what if, instead of rushing through the between to get to the other side, to get to "settled" and "stable" and "comfortable", we accepted that this time is moving us from one version of ourselves to the next?
What if we let "home" develop within us as we wait for this new self to blossom into fruition?
What if we allowed ourselves the grace to hold on to those who are "home" to us, the ones who know our hearts, the ones who call us by name? What if we held on without apology, acknowledging our need for them?
What if we were honest? About the good and the bad, acknowledging that someone else may be in the between right now and need our words to speak into their lives from our place of uprootedness to theirs?
Between the ending of something and the beginning of something else.
Between the introduction and the first chapter.
Between knowing who we were and knowing who we're becoming.
It's okay.
Because at the heart of the matter, we all just want to be called by name and we all want to go home.
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