At Home Away
We’d been away from home for three weeks.
Away from the comfort of the bed we fall into each night.
Away from the kitchen table worn smooth by a decade’s worth of daily meals.
Away from “the spot” in front of the fireplace where the carpet is matted from many days curled up in front of it.
At the end of our travels, my grown daughter noted the length of time and asked if it had been hard to be away from home for so long. It only took a second for me to answer:
“It’s easy to be away from home when you’re with the person you’re most ‘at home’ with.”
It was true: my husband and I had been traveling together for the entirety of those weeks. Though we’d bounced from one location to another over the course of that time, sleeping in six different beds, I never felt displaced from my life because he’d been with me. I hadn’t really given much thought to it before she’d asked. My answer was instinctive, I suppose.
But right after those words tumbled out of my mouth, I realized there was a spiritual truth in them. . .truth I have yet to fully grasp.
This is exactly how I can feel with God.
Yet I don’t always recognize the companionship He offers me. . .
. . .when I’m traveling for work and sit alone in the restaurant
. . .when I’m in a roomful of people I don’t know and feel out of place
. . .when I wonder whether the contribution I make to the groups I’m part of would be missed
Maybe I prefer the physical presence of a familiar human over that of our invisible God? Maybe being known and included by people matters more to me than being accepted by Him? Maybe I value the opinions and esteem of those I can audibly hear over His still, small voice?
I don’t want to. I don’t mean to. But maybe I do?
God designed us to enjoy the fellowship of other people; it’s not wrong to crave meaningful friendships or even to desire marriage. Yet we won’t all have a spouse. Friendships change over time, distance, and new seasons in life. Even the local church bodies we’re part of are an ever-changing organism that grows and contracts, adding new faces and losing others all the time and we can sometimes feel we’ve lost our place in it.
In this hurried, digital age, we are likely to continue to feel the pangs of discomfort or insecurity in social settings. Our lives will certainly hold seasons of loneliness and unmet desires in our relationships (perhaps unmet desires for relationships, as well). We’ll crave the familiarity of feeling at home with people we love.
Let’s allow these moments of being “away” from home to point us back to God—our constant, all-sufficient, loving companion. He is our “dwelling place” (Psalm 90:1) so even when we are displaced—physically or figuratively—we can feel at home with Him.
–Written by Kirsten Holmberg. Used by permission from the author.
