Hello Home

After a few years of transition, I'm finally feeling like I'm on the threshold of finally being able to put some my roots down, and let me tell you, there's no feeling like it. I love adventure and exploration, and trying new experiences and all that good stuff. I have 9 countries and 4 continents under my belt, but I feel like in my life, all the adventures in the world were all me trying to find...home.

The last few years have had some great experiences, but also some really hurtful ones. Friendship was a major challenge considering that I lived in a city where every conversation was prefaced by, "If/when I move/go back home..." Even when I did try to sink some roots in to work and internships and different environments, my efforts weren't always reciprocated. I hadn't realized how steep the mountain was until I got to the top of it and looked back. This past season kind of sucked, and was also incredibly hard.

But I look back and think how much I learned about myself during these transitions and my biggest lesson of all is that places and people do not define me. Being friends with the most popular people, or having the most glamorous job, or having the latest style of clothes, doesn't define me. I finally settled on the fact that my image is created in Jesus and my identity rests on a canvas that even the broadest strokes from the hand of man can't cover.

Saying goodbye to the familiar is never easy, no matter how much you believe you want to leave. One phrase has been my anchor point, you have to say goodbye to say hello. 

After the whirlwind that the past few years have been I'm ready to say hello to home. Home still carries it's share of adventure and new experiences and challenges, but home also brings the opportunity to be firmly planted in the things that my heart yearns for: in love, in family, in covenant friendships, in repairing relationships that have been broken, in investing in forever, investing in home.

In a few short weeks, everything I own will be packed up in the back of a Jeep and driven 800 miles away, and I will be on my way to being home. Home isn't a place, or a city, home is a place where you can love and be loved. Home is being rooted. The thought of finally being home with the one I love, fills me with more peace and joy than I can even explain.