Tonight, I’m sitting alone in a big, dark kitchen. My family is asleep. They are in the same house but somehow they feel far away. Streets in Taiwan keep coming back to my memory. The smell of damp cement, the flash of Chinese neon lights. But I am here now. Home. What is home? I think it’s a feeling. It’s a feeling of being understood and accepted. A sensation of understanding, belonging and love…..a sense of wholeness. I believe it is a state where the heart can be itself without being afraid or false. Home is what we all yearn for from the depths of our souls.
Where do we find home? That is a question I have been asking myself for the past few weeks. I landed in my native country, drove to a new house, unpacked my suitcases in a fresh, blue room. I spoke English. It didn’t feel like home. The large family rooms, tree-lined highways and brisk fall weather didn’t create any emotional stir in my heart. Why? What was lacking? My family began talking about Halloween parties and state policy affairs. I listened with care yet had no true interest in what they discussed. Could home feel so foreign? How could it become mine again?
What has most surprised me about my end-of-mission experience has been what small pockets of time and circumstance have given me the rich warmth of “home”. People bring the soft glow back to me. People who seem to awaken a sense of who I am and who I will become. A place doesn’t make a home; it is the connections we share.
I felt home when I cooked breakfast with my 88 yr old hero of a grandpa. I felt home when my old mission companion Sister Chao tackled me from behind at a missionary reunion. I felt home laughing in the car with T.J. and Julia as we picked up Thai take-out. I felt it while standing in a mountain canyon, feeling the sun, hearing the crunch of the fall leaves beneath my shoes. These experiences help me feel “home”. They seem to reintroduce me to the better qualities of who I was before my Asian adventures began…. and help me continue to accept what changes will forever be a part of me.
Home is still in my heart… and always will be.
There’s no place like home…. There’s no place but ‘THEM’.
Lauren-I have a letter on my desk that I started writing to you two months ago and time slipped away and now you're home!! I have been so inspired by your letters home during your mission. Thank you for your ability to describe what you are experiencing so well that I feel it too. We would love to see you, could we have you over some time?
ReplyDeletelots of love,
Sister Ludlow