Home is Where I'm With You

God has replaced Philip Philip's voice. Exemplifying what my Mom says, God's truth can be everywhere.

I realized the other night that almost every time I refer to a decision or move I have made in the past I say, "we went", "we did". The "we" I am referring to is not another person, or my schizophrenic personality, it's God.

This has not been a conscious shift, but a gradual and sure one. I trace a key origin of the idea to my third summer at camp. This summer was the last one before I moved away from home for the first time. During the dedication that we have the night before the campers come, my director spoke about God as Abba. Abba is the name that the Jewish children would call their fathers, much like our "daddy", he said.

I have been blessed with a fantastic father. My whole life he has gone with me. Carrying me as a child, leading me as I approached adolescents and walking alongside me as I have come awkwardly stumbling into adulthood. As such, one of my least favorite things about going to school was moving five hours from him.

That night God began transformation of my ideas of Himself. God was my daddy. He goes with me, stronger, wiser, more loving and more able to teach than my earthly father will ever be. I went to school that fall in a shaky revelation that I had a daddy who would never leave.

Over the past two years, God has time and again reiterated this concept to my soul, so that it is now nearly impossible for me to imagine going anywhere on my own. "I" am now a forevermore a "we". I have become less reliant on things I always thought I'd need, because my concept of "home" is changing. "Home" is no longer limited to an address, a town, or a building.

My "home" is steadily becoming God, therefore my earthly equation of "home" has and is becoming not a structure, but His body.  My parents house is home because they are there and because my brothers and sisters will return there. But I can meet my brothers and sisters in a restaurant in a city I have never been to before and feel equally at home.  Camp is a home, not for where it is, but for the people within the gate. I can spent a weekend with member of my camp family in Athens (first time there) and as I drove away, all I could think was, "I have not felt so at home in a while."

All of this has come to the forefront of my mind and heart in the last few months as God has put me in the place of circumstantial isolation. I am five hours from friends at school, an hour and a half to three hours from camp family, and even experiencing the longest isolation from my brothers and sisters that I ever have.  It has felt like pieces of my heart being ripped away, but now I am seeing that is is God pruning and trimming my vine (John 15).

God is taking away crutches of anything in my life that I have been unconsciously giving glory to. In my mind I have never felt so alone, but in that, God has redirected my heart and took back His glory. Because even those loving relationships are truly nothing without God.

I thought that "home" would be the theme, if you will, of my semester, because I was moving back to my parent's house. I prepared myself and my heart against creating grudges, or bitterness against this place and my parents. I had no idea, what God really had in store for me, and the exciting thing is, there will  be even more. And because God is becoming more so than ever, my home, and my confidence, I know I am ready, because "I" am a "we".

(See coinciding post here)