Home Is Where The _____ Is (Part Three)

When you think of home, what immediately comes to your mind?

A house. Cozy bed. Favorite nook. Mother's cooking. Playing outside. Family. Friends. Small town. Constantly moving city. Memories. Things. People. Safety. Security. Love. Acceptance. Roots.

When I think of home, I immediately visualize my parents, spouse and closest friends. Then I think about the millions of sisters and brothers across the world who love the Creator. No matter how hard I try not to attach home to a place, I do think about the town my parents live in at the moment where I spent my teen years. Then I think about my brothers and family who live 13 hours away where I spent my childhood. Then each place I've been, be it for 2 weeks or 2 years, has had a certain element of home that has left an imprint on me.

It's okay to experience homesickness. Like I said in Part Two, homesickness is grieving, and that's okay. But what's not okay is when homesickness turns into an identity crisis.

What happens when I put my identity into where I am from, how I was raised or what I look like?
I am American. "Uh-marr-eh-kuh!"  So to the third-world, they assume all Americans are Christians who smoke, drink alcohol, and are promiscuous. Well, that's what TV says so it must be true.
I'm a redhead, so I must be feisty, have a fiery temper and hail from Ireland.

I've started to stereotype myself because I've accidentally wrapped my identity with my past. And though roots are part of what make us.. us, it's no longer a strong root when you move into a different pasture. So what keeps us grounded?

If I say I am this, then I exclude that. "I am a redhead, so I can't be South Asian." This makes it even more difficult when I'm needing to learn and accept parts of the new culture. It's pitting me against them. I'm not accepting change, my perspective gets more narrow and my heart deceivingly becomes prideful. I get infuriated by the many differences. I lose sight of the similarities and the positive things I should appreciate in the new culture.

I've already determined my reaction according to my unmet expectations. "I want to live in South Asia and not be seen as an American!" But, little miss redhead, you can't be fully South Asian because you're not. And you'll never be the same as when you left America.

You learn to compromise with yourself, balancing the lifestyle you knew and the one you should adapt to instill sanity and a new kind of normalcy. There is a way to be a little bit of everything. You can wake up on a mattress in a bed frame but then take a 5 minute shower before the water heater runs out. You can go to the market and do your best to speak the little language you know to buy fresh produce but then go back to your house, make dinner and watch a movie as if you were in your home country. You learn to have grace for yourself and remind yourself to show grace towards your new country.

So, I am human, 
I am loved by God (Romans 5:8)
I have been rescued from Satan's rule (Col 1:13),
I am adopted as God's child (Eph 1:5), 
I have been bought with a price - I am not my own - I belong to God (1 Cor 6:19-20),
I have been made complete in Christ (Col 2:10),
I have the right to come boldly before the throne of God to find mercy and grace in time of need (Heb 4:16),
I am an alien and stranger to this world in which I temporarily live (1 Peter 2:11),
and I am a citizen of heaven (Phil 3:20).

My home is in heaven. My heart is shared among many loved ones. My identity is in Christ. Home is where He is working and it's when I'm walking with Him. It's knowing that I have an eternal home in Heaven. For me, home is where the Father is.

If home is where the heart is, where is your heart residing?

Be rooted and grounded in love (Eph 3:14-19).

For more on the woman's heart and identity, refer to Developing A Discerning Heart.

Home Is Where The _____ Is (Part Two)

Georgia. Oklahoma. Guatemala. Europe. Haiti. New Orleans. Morocco. Virginia. India. Sri Lanka. Texas.

Places that have changed some part of me. Places where God has shown me what true poverty, wealth, corruption, effective education, devastation, hospitality, community, cultural differences and human similarities all look like. And He's confirmed over and again His desire for his children to know Him and what His Son has done for them.

When I'm laying in bed fully awake because the street dogs barked through the night, the neighbors next door started banging pots in the kitchen for breakfast and the construction workers outside have started drilling through concrete, I have three choices:

1. I can accept the noises and disturbance of a schedule that makes me uncomfortable and find things that I am thankful for.
2. I can begrudgingly tolerate it and over time just get plumb annoyed.
3. I can become annoyed instantly and refuse it as a wave of homesickness knocks me out for the rest of the day.

Of course I'd like to say that when this happened in India, I always chose the first option. But come on. I'm human. I struggle. And although letting things annoy you is not a healthy habit to establish, feeling homesick is not an unwarranted expression.

Homesickness is grieving, and that's okay.

It's missing people, places, things and ways. It's showing yourself that you do love someone or something enough that it hurts. It shows who you are missing that you care about them. It shows that you are human.

Jesus was homeless. Yeah, he struggled. He was known for healing and teaching so much that people would always flock to him like a celebrity and he would struggle to find time alone. He was homesick as well as oppressed. I bet the disciples annoyed him at times. I'm thinking when he cursed the fig tree he was "hangry" (hungry + angry). And as the man of sorrows he certainly grieved!

So you and I are not alone in these feelings. It's not like we're talking to a god that's manmade. We're talking with the God who created us in His image and who really knows and feels what we're going through.

I can already tell you that I will miss my parents more than anyone else on the face of the earth. I'll also miss the little things -- chatting with girl friends in the local coffee shop, wearing boots in the fall, free water at restaurants, cheese, makeup for pale people -- that truly become big things when you don't have access to them.

I feel uncomfortable when I don't know how to communicate because I don't know the language yet, where toilet paper is not a thing, people are always staring, and when some try to take advantage of us monetarily and make fun of how we look.

But I will make every effort to choose to be thankful. Thankful that I'll be living in beautiful green tea plantations, that some signs are in English, they have clothes for cheap, they sell fresh food in the marketplace, and that I can use my skills for Him in this place.

Here's an article I found that was very helpful for anyone who is in the process of grieving (whether you've accepted it or not): Outlawed Grief, A Curse In Disguise.

From living overseas and now moving once again in two weeks, I'd like to think that "Home is where the people I love are," or "Home is where family, friends and community reside". I'm okay with that. But is that really what we think it means? Have we made the mistake in putting our identity into where we are from: "Where the home is, there our identity is also"?

Sleep deprived in India - I'd say I was feeling #2 in this photo.

Home Is Where The _____ Is (Part One)

One of my very first memories was when I was 3 years old sitting in the back of the car, holding on to my blue and white checkered pillow, saying bye to our old house in Oklahoma. I spent a very happy childhood in Atlanta, adventuring about in the pines and by the creek, making up songs and trying various sports throughout the years. Then when I was 11, it happened.

"How would you like to move to Oklahoma?"

Oklahoma? The only thing I remember of that place is dry, flat plains when visiting my grandparents during a few summers. But, I did learn in school that Oklahoma was known for horses, teepees and tornadoes. So I said, "Sure!", thinking it would be another adventure.. and maybe, just maybe, I'd get a horse!

Immediately I was made fun of my first week at my Oklahoma school. I had a Southern accent, bright red hair, awkward social skills and very good posture. I didn't want to stick out in a bad way, so I decided I wouldn't have an accent and that was that. I also noticed how everyone had poor posture so I tried slumping in my seat as well and though it was uncomfortable (and my hair got caught on the back of the seat more times than I could count), I managed to reverse all the hard work my mother put into my straight shoulders and pleasantly alert presence.

I tried to make friends with one girl but on the 3rd day of our friendship she got off the see-saw and said, "I'm bored. I'm going to be friends with Caroline instead." So she skipped off leaving me more alone than ever. I eventually found a shy girl who was just as crazy as me when we got to know each other. We were known as the "Kat Luvers", both discovered we needed wire-rimmed glasses at the same time, both grew out our hair to our waist, and both were unashamedly Lord of the Rings fanatics. We're still friends today.

I didn't get a horse. I saw a teepee once in a museum but quickly learned Native Americans do not live in teepees anymore. I saw the devastating monster EF4 tornado that trekked 24 miles through Moore and Choctaw in 2011 and have taken shelter as a tornado landed, rose up over our heads, and then touched back down a mile away. I've heard enough stories to have nightmares for the rest of my life (but now I am able to lucid dream a shelter just in time).

Since the awkward events of being a normal kid, Oklahoma has treated me well with providing excellent education, a warm welcoming community and a church family that accepts me every time I come and go to the field. One could be under the impression that "Home is where I live" or "Home is where I move to". But this is not my home. And it's not in Atlanta, either.

Two crazy friends who have become friends for life (6th grade, 10 years later).

How To Make South Indian Chai Tea

    

For 2-4 people:
2 black tea bags (or 1/2 cup loose leaf tea)
4 small cinnamon sticks (or 1-2 tbsp ground cinnamon)
1 tbsp clove
1 tbsp cardamom, gnashed
Milk, more than water
Sugar, to taste

Boil water (South Indians boil just milk).
Steep tea and spices for 5 minutes on low heat.
Pour in milk and stir in sugar (will turn from dark brown to light tan color).
Ladle chai or strain spices first, keeping warm on low heat while serving.

I purchased my spices at a local Indian mart. Here are links to something similar:

Cinnamon sticks
Clove
Cardamom
Darjeeling black tea
Decaf English Breakfast black tea

Gettysburg

A forecast day set the mood as we walked into the museum, raindrops sliding down the windows and squeaky boots crossing the laminated floor.  We entered the theater, climbing down the steep steps to find a seat before the show started.  As the lights dimmed, solemn music filled the room and the deep voice of Morgan Freeman took precedence as he started a string of quotes leading into the history of our nation.

"A nation divided against itself cannot stand." 1

As many before us have shared we felt that same somber air as we spent our day in Gettysburg.



The museum was truly the best I've seen.  Large wall to wall images. Short videos to briefly learn about various facts, like war tactics or what slavery was like, in every other room. Articles and objects from the battlefield and era behind clear glass. The museum as a whole acting as a timeline from the beginning of the Civil War to the end.  I highly recommend taking a day to go not only to Gettysburg, but to this museum.

"I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.. 

It will become all one thing or all the other." 2

We drove to stop 1, inserting our audio tour guide and gathering our surroundings.  As the narrator and dramatic noises of warfare filled our ears, our eyes and imagination soaked in the wheat fields, the barn with a cannonball sized hole, Little Round Top, Big Round Top, the peach orchard, Devil's Den, and finally the cemetery.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, 

a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition 

that all men are created equal."

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  

We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this."

 

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

"It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 3

 

I walked away from the well preserved battlefield, eyes opened by the horror and cost of freedom for this nation, the United States of America, to truly become the land of the free and home of the brave.


The Gettysburg Museum

1 Mark 3:25, Lincoln quoted in his House Divided Speech in June 1858.
2 Lincoln, House Divided Speech
3 Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, November 1863