Home

Home.

This simple word can hold so much emotion.

Hopefully, it brings a smile to your face, feels you with a warmth that touches your soul.

Home should be the place where you feel the safest, the place where you are the most yourself, and know you are loved unconditionally.  Home is a place you are free to make mistakes and are given grace more often than judgement.  Home is where you belong.

My home is in a suburb of Kansas City, where my family of five resides.  My home is not big, it is often messy and sometimes downright dirty.  It is almost always noisy.  And it is one of my favorite places in the world.  

Of course, you will also hear me say that I am going "home" every time I head to the small town I grew up in, even though I haven't lived there for almost 20 years.  In some ways, it will always be home.  It holds a part of my heart that I can only connect to when I am there.  

My parents moved into the house I grew up when I was one year old.  They moved out when I was 27.  To say that this is the home where I spent my formative years would be a gross understatement.  To this day when I dream, 90% of my dreams take place in that house, even when they involve people from my life now, who have no idea where Moundridge, KS even is.  Trust me, I know how strange that is!

Home, to me, is a wonderful place.  The mere word brings a smile to my face and puts warm fuzzies in my tummy.  But I know that is not the case for everyone.

For some, for too many, home is a place of pain, of hurt and suffering.  It is not a happy place.  It's not a place they want to be.  It's not where they belong.  

One of my husbands favorite songs is "Where I Belong" by Building 429.  The chorus goes something like this...

All I know is I'm not home yet
this is not where I belong
take this world and give me Jesus
this is not where belong

There is a home for each of us.  A home far better than any we have ever experienced here on Earth.  Regardless of how wonderful or awful your home here on Earth has become, it is not where you belong, not eternally.  It's not where you were created to be for all time.  You were made for so much more than this.  And THAT is where you belong, right beside you heavenly father.  He has created the most PERFECT home just for you.  It is a home where you will be loved unconditionally, treasured abundantly, and protected fiercely.  It is the one place you truly belong.  It is home.

Don't get caught up in this stuff here, this isn't home.  As much as I love the four walls surrounding me right now (on a snowy day in May????) this is not where I belong.  Some day, I will be up in heaven at the feet of my heavenly father and only then will I be home, right where I belong.