Homes

Here I am typing away on my mother's ergonomic keyboard, the keyboard I often typed essays and emails on in high school. I am sitting on her rolling chair, which I have sat on many times over several years, but though I never learned to adjust so much as the seat height on purpose.

I have been "home" in California for a whole week. This visit, I have felt vividly that this is not home anymore, not really. California is a home for me, my parents are a home for me. But this is not the house I live in, the place my stuff is (mostly), or even, at this point, the home of my very closest family member. O. is my closest family now, and we have our own home. That is the place that everything is the way I have arranged it to be (mostly); that is the place, now, that is most comfortable to me.

How very strange, to have my own home and have it not be here. My heart is divided between California, which is the land I love, and a little house in New Jersey, which is an island of comfort and familiarity in a great expanse of the unfamiliar. How amazing, really, to be able to call two places home. It's a luxury.

The Bible has it that we are strangers and aliens in this world, and our true home is in heaven. One interpretation is that we shouldn't get too attached here or settle down. But I have yesterday's shining sea and golden cliffs still glowing behind my eyelids. I have beloved books alphabetized on bookshelves. I have a husband and parents in this house, and I have homemade cookies in my stomach. How can I deny the home-ness of this?

This came to me: Heaven as true home doesn't make this present gift of home less real or good. Rather, this good gift, the sweetness of this home, is a foretaste of a sweeter, deeper home. Let me magnify heaven, rather than diminishing earth.

God, I am thankful for home.