I should just go ahead and write a book on my freshman year of college. The struggles, the change, the joy and the new. It couldn’t all be summed up into one genre. It’d have a genre of its own, because God didn’t create my story like anyone else’s. Mine is distinct and original, a painted path full of moments to see His glory and full of moments where I must lose myself in the bigger picture. And I would have it no other way. The moral of the story is that my year can be summed up in themes, smaller stories in my genre of life, and I guess this’ll be a good medium to write them out on. My first, major theme: home.
The drive to school on August 14th was a rollercoaster. Literally, because it was stop- and start traffic for five hours, and figuratively, because I’d feel fine about leaving one second and not sure where I was going the next. I know I said one thing “this is going to be my college, not my home.” I’ll learn and be alive here, but I wont live here. I’ll live at my home, in Arlington Virginia.
Moving is foreign to me. And change is not my forte. I’ve lived in the same house almost my whole life. I identify with the red brick exterior and comfy colorful interior. I’ve walked up these steps to lay my head down at night one too many nights. I’ve seen my home in the rearview mirror only to know that I’ll see it again in a few hours or days. This time though, there wasn’t a timestamp on my time away from home. Yeah, I saw it in my rearview mirror, but I also saw my backseat packed with my belongings, stuff to allow me to live comfortably in this new room I was traveling to.
The home battle was a year-long battle for me. Some weeks, I wouldn’t even have time to think about my home. Some weeks, I would think too much about my home. And others, I’d feel like I was too in-between homes to know which was which. I always knew one thing, the place I called home, that was my home of 15 years in Arlington. I would correct my texts if I said that I was ever coming “home” to CNU. I’d always say back to school, back to my dorm, back to Newport News. Not home, no. My home was three hours away. I’d be giddy on my ride home every break, and cry on my way back to school. Its not that I didn’t like school, heck no, I loved it. It was that there was some form of internal conflict of living a double life or in this case, a double home.
Home back home was just so easy and comfortable. It was familiar, it was simple, it did not challenge me daily, it did not take me out of my comfort zone. Home was always warm and quiet. Inviting and consistent. Home wasn’t new, home was old. And home was where I had left my heart.
But of course, my God, oh He doesn’t settle for easy. He didn’t settle for knowing that I was relying on my easy home back home to get me through the time at school. He knew where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there. And that was not to be done with the in-between home attitude. In the beginning of last semester, I was homesick before I even went back to school. I missed it before I even left. On my drive back, I prayed desperately for a change of heart, for a new reason to be at school, for this in-between feeling to be covered with joy. And of course, the Big Man upstairs has got my back and my heart, and he answered that prayer quickly and forcefully.
I stepped foot on my campus with a new feeling. I hadn’t yet accepted that this place was my home, but I knew this is where I was meant to be. I knew that I was called here for something bigger than I could do by myself. And I knew that an attitude change was in store for me before I could accept this place as my home. Little by little, my heart began to change. My heart got involved in the place outside of my campus, in a high school. My heart began to walk into the house of people who permanently lived there, not just college kids who were there for four years. My heart began to know how things were run in the town beyond the campus I stepped foot on. And my heart began to break for the world that I saw these people living for, these high school girls in the town beyond my school walls. And my heart began to break for a new home.
I had began to realize one major thing I was missing: the truth that my home was not on this earth. My home was above, with my God, in a cloud of witnesses watching my every move. And I knew another truth, my home here on earth was temporary wherever I was. And my sense of home, my feeling of belonging, my feeling of purpose, it was shifted. On Sunday night, after moving out Sunday morning, I drove home from a YoungLife event. My heart was at peace. The battle had been settled. I knew where I was going. I was going home. And as I pulled into the driveway, I did not long to be anywhere else but where I was for once. I was home in Newport News, where the Lord has called me to call home for at least the next four years, if not more. Where things will never be like my other home, comfortable and easy. Where things will most likely be challenging, and hard, and new and big, and real. And I’ll be longing for my heavenly home because I know that things will be so much better there, and where I’ll be overwhelmed with joy on a daily basis.
I know that this home I am in now, in Arlington Virginia, this’ll be my home for good. But, who says I cant have two homes? What about three? It is already written that I am not yet in my eternal home, where everything will be right and perfect. So, I can now have my cake and eat it too. I’ll have my cake at my home in Arlington Virginia. And I’ll eat my cake for 7 months out of the year in my home in Newport News. And one day, my Father will call me to my real home, and I’ll both have my cake and eat it in the same spot every day for the rest of eternity, and the battle will be settled once again. But for now, I’ve got two earthly homes where I lay my head, where I live, where I laugh and where I cry. Part of my heart was left in Newport News as I drove back to Arlington. And I picked up another piece of my heart as walked through the big green door of my house here in Arlington. My heart is spread out, I know that, one piece is in a swampy, beautiful part of southern Virginia, and one piece is in a safe-haven of Northern Virginia, and a bigger piece is above with my God. And I am quite alright with that.
