Feeling at Home

I recently finished reading a book by one of my favorite authors, Madeleine L'Engle, called A Circle of Quiet. The book is basically a journal; at least a lot of the writing is taken from L'Engle's personal journals, she explains. While reading any book, I find myself thinking, analyzing, making connections between whatever I'm going through and feeling at the time and what the author is saying, whether through fiction or non-fiction, and in this particular book, thought-provoking ideas abound. My idea for this blog (at least as a starting point) is to take intriguing ideas from reading as leaping-off points and write about my own reflections in response to those ideas.

So, I'll just leap right in! I love the question L'Engle raises after she shares a story about living in a small town and not feeling quite part of the long-standing community there:

But where, after we have made the great decision to leave the security of childhood and move on into the vastness of maturity, does anybody ever feel completely at home?

I want to say, "Yeah! Where? Nowhere, really." At least this has been my experience.

Growing up, I used to read every night at bedtime, snuggled into my covers with a cozy pillow and the soft yellow light of a bedside lamp. (I still try to read at bedtime now, but exhaustion often takes over!) The feelings I had during those bedtimes were secure, comfortable, peaceful, at rest, trusting, calm. I've often wondered as an adult where those feelings have gone.

It seems like as children we tend to trust that our parents have things under control and everything will be fine. I don't think these are even conscious thoughts for children - they might just be ingrained, automatic. Then as we get older, of course we gain more and more responsibilities, but we are still at home under our parents' roof. Not too much really changes. For me, life changed most rapidly and drastically after I graduated from college and moved to a new town to start grad school (I had gone to college near my hometown and lived at home for good portions of the time). The day after my college graduation, my parents moved to a new town a good five hour drive from the place I had lived for my whole life up until that point.

Changes: New town, living with my sister and then on my own, new friends, new church, and eventually new (first) full-time job. Perhaps the decision to "move on into the vastness of maturity" had happened, or at least the move had been effected in my life regardless of my choice! There are many questions that one has to ask and actually answer at this point in one's life: Who am I as an adult person? What's my place in the world? How am I defined? These are hard questions to answer.

God's word and prayer, and also many talks with close friends and family, helped me immensely in answering these questions, but I still think L'Engle is right in questioning whether we can ever feel at home in the world once we are aware of the broadness of life, the bigness of the world around us, and the complicated nature of relationships. That feeling of complete security I had as a child at bedtime may not come back in its totality anymore, though I think God grants glimpses of it from time to time.

The most significant way I've seen God grant some feelings of "at home-ness" and stability in my life is through marriage, which I believe is a gift from God that serves many purposes, greatest of which is to show to people a sort of picture of God's kind of unconditional love in a way that is, to a great extent, tangible. Another purpose, I think, may be to show His children a glimpse of the security and feeling of being at home that they can have in His presence both now and ultimately with Him outside of their earthly lifetimes.

The truth is, I don't belong here. Many things in earthly life testify to this truth: I feel despair at the lack of having enough time for valuable things; I am saddened by death, which seems so drastically wrong; I long for something somehow closer.

The longing, the lack of feeling at home, help point to the reality of an eternity beyond this life, and a citizenship in heaven. This verse from Paul's letter to the Philippians is a good encouragement and reminder to me:

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. (Philippians 3:20-21)

I am waiting for something different and better, something that cannot be found here and now. The lack of feeling at home in the world reminds me to keep looking forward to my eternal home with the Lord. Then finally those feelings of childhood security will grow again.