18 July 2011

Winding our way home

We've crossed the border back into South Africa and are pushing to make it back home today, even though that will mean 16 hours of driving. The truck we are driving goes really slow on hills, and we see nothing but mountains ahead of us. But somewhere over those mountains and further down the road is home.

When you live as a missionary, home becomes kind of a relative term. Home is the place in Johannesburg where my paintings hang and our beds are just right and our dogs are waiting for us. But home is also Michigan where our bigger family still loves us and the leaves turn a thousand different welcoming colors and Marie Catrib will make me a sandwich. Home is NewJersey where Billy grew up, just across the river from the energy of NYC. Bagels and pizza and strong coffee and his father who he misses every day.

We also find scattered pieces of home at a backpackers along an isolated Mozambique shoreline - like shells to be picked up along the beach and celebrated as beautiful. Camping with friends who share the deep and the hard and the joyful. Friends who talk late into the night and celebrate the moment we are all in as much as dreaming toward the future, as precarious and delicate as that future seems. Home is whenever we are together as a family. Not just in the same room, but in the same heart. Watching our teenagers - alive in their freedoms; going to the market on their own, exploring the beach for hours, playing soccer with local children.

Home is so much more than where we plant our garden, I think it's more about who we share it with.

Where do you feel at home??

2 comments:

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L64c5vT3NBw

    Mostly, wherever my wife is. I'm pretty flexible aside from that...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love it Peter - isn't it the truth?
    Billy and I have said that time and time again in this crazy journey - as long as we are together, we are home.
    Good lovin'

    ReplyDelete

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