What Is Home
Ive been in America now for like 2 weeks and I have less than a month left before I return to Thailand for another year. Being back is a weird reality. A mix between knowing that this is not my life anymore, but also realizing that I still belong here. It's actually been hard to accept. To be honest it feels like I never even left but in the same sense I'm not the same as I was when I did leave.
On a lighter note, when I was in Thailand I craved chipolte, chickfila, and so many other foods. I craved all things american...but now that Im here I crave green curry and manao soda and fried rice. American food doesn't sit well with me anymore and that chickfila sandwhich wasn't nearly as good as I remembered it, but those fries, ok they were! It all tastes so good but it makes me feel so bad.
All this has made me think a lot about what is home? Is home where your family is? Where you live? Where you love to be? What happens when you love to be in more than one place? We all know the saying "Home is where the heart is" but what happens when your heart is in more than one place.
Then it hit me. If home is where the heart is, and my heart is in Jesus, then my home is with him, not here on earth. This may sound absurd to some people. How could my home not be in this world? Easy, home is where we feel completely loved, completely free, completely alive, and where our joy is complete, we can only be fully complete in the presence of the Lord! Therefore my home can't be in America because I feel so torn constantly, I feel incomplete, missing the people I love in Thailand and desiring to be fully invested in the people in front of me that I love deeply. But in Thailand I miss the people I love in America while desiring to be fully invested there as well. Torn between two homes, thats not free, thats not fully being alive, thats not the most joy. My heart is constantly longing to be complete, but that will only happen when I am standing at the feet of Jesus at the gates of heaven, not when I get back to Thailand, or come back to America.
This may sound sad to you, but honestly realizing that my home is not of this world is actually one of the most freeing things. Being back in America won't completely fulfill my heart, but returning to Thailand wont completely fill my heart either. The verses in scripture about this finally make sense to me. I finally understand that my home is not here, its with Jesus. That gives me so much freedom to live my days not longing for the other, not desiring to be in the other place because the fulfillment won't come, it only comes when I put my hope in JESUS!
Here are some verses I've been toiling with. When you follow Jesus we become foreigners on earth, no matter where we are because our citizenship is in Heaven, because we belong to the King!
Philippians 3:20-21 "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Hebrews 11:13-16 "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance,admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."
Hebrews 13:14 "For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come."
John 17:14-16 "I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it."
PS> All that not to say its not been so fun being home. Spending time with family and catching up with the best friends! Here are a few of my current America snaps! :)
