What is home? It is safety, sustenance, and society. It is our first seat at the theater of the world, the first school in which we study. It is warm and smells good, like baking bread. We learn to mind Mama, we learn to walk, and then we learn to walk away. We come back, bringing our spouses and children with us. It’s a good place to grow up, a good place to leave, and a good place to return.
Most people I know don’t live their whole life in one place. Houses are changed, but we make our home wherever we are. Life changes with loss and gain. We lose what we have and gain something else we will have for a while. Sometimes we feel diminished from the exchange, sometimes we feel expanded. Our story unfolds.
I think of these things because we recently resigned our membership from our church of a decade. We were released as members in good standing to the care of our new church. It is bitter because it is so sweet.
Only the call of God could give us the strength to part. Friendship begs to grow longer because it always has more to give. Will we be able to tend to our extended community with love? If God wills. We are comforted even without knowing, for even if some of these vines grow grey on the trellis, they will be restored to a living green when we enter the saints’ rest.