The Long Way Home

Homes are interesting things. Some people live in one place their whole life, and can't imagine going anywhere else - be it a big city like New York or a tiny village in Africa that doesn't even have a name.

They say home is where the heart is, and to a certain extent that's true. Home is a place where we can relax, unwind, and air our dirty laundry (both literal and proverbial). We do things at home that we can do no where else, and thus we often act differently at home than out in the big, wide world.

Home brings feelings of contentment and security, of love and acceptance. Some blessed folk find this in the comfort of their family, regardless of nationality, race, or living situation. No matter where they are, they know that they have a place where they belong. On the other hand, so many - especially nowadays - find that their families do not provide the peace and stability so fundamental to human growth and development. Marital stress, affairs, divorces, obsessions, and preoccupations with the unimportant things in life (like money, fame, and 'the good job') chip away at what home and family were supposed to mean.

My own family appears relatively unaffected by this. I have two parents, one male and one female, married to each other. My dad works, my mom stays home with the kids (though she does take odd jobs on the side, mostly catering and tutoring). My little sisters have all experienced both homeschooling and public schooling, and each child is enrolled in what my parents deem is the best teaching method for her.

We never had a physical house as a home, as I was growing up. My dad was Navy; we moved into a new house (usually in a new city) every four years. My home was with my family, wherever we went.

And yet, I realized over the break that this is not my home. Things have changed...and some things that should have changed, matured, have not. My family has moved on in my absence; while my existence is affirmed in a quiet way in passing, I am no longer a part of their day-to-day life. Meanwhile, in school, I've been busy growing, learning, and trying to become a better person. Coming home for break thrusts me back into a situation where I am not strictly needed - my family's home life - with all sorts of brand spanking new ideas, opinions, and attitudes. That would be great, if my family knew what to do with them all. Here I am, a college student, back for a few weeks, and my parents automatically revert back to treating me like they did when I fist left home...at seventeen. I'm practically a different person now, one who desperately wants to be acknowledged as the adult I am. My parents insist otherwise.

I'm sure I'm just being over-melodramatic, the influence of my nightcap (a lovely mixture of sleep deprivation, a shot of depression, and panic, topped with a light touch of seasonal illness) finally taking its toll. Every college student goes through the same thing, to a certain degree.

That does not change the fact that my home is no longer at my family's residence. My home, the one place I feel accepted and wanted, is at school...and that comes with a price tag and a set time limit. Soon, I'll be forcibly ejected out into a world my education has only prepared me for in theory, where I will be expected to find a job and a house and a husband and a dog and...and...and be a Productive Member of Society (whatever that is...pthft).

It's amusing, at times, to read different legends about the afterlife, both modern and ancient. It's a universal human trait, it seems, to wonder about what lies after death.

Many, if not most, people picture the 'Christian Heaven' to be a place of white, puffy clouds mysteriously gifted with the power to support weight, upon which angels and humans sit clothed mystically in white robes and armed with harps. the Beatific Vision is reduced to an eternal battle of the bands, featuring angelic choirs as competitors. Nobody has told us what Heaven is like, in an earthly sense - what it looks, smells, feels, sounds, and tastes like (don't you DARE go lick one a' them pearly gates, y'hear?). In fact, I think there will be only one word to describe the feeling we get when we enter Heaven, the feeling of peace, security, acceptance and love.

Home.


God bless,
PHC