Well hello again, friends.
It’s nearly September and the mornings are feeling cool again here in Kansas City. I’m solidly into my new full time role as a night shift hospital chaplain. We are building new family routines around jobs and schooling; it’s the first time all four of my family members are in a different place every day. It’s been an adjustment, but one benefit of working nights is that I get to see the sun low in the horizon as it makes its ascent when I am driving home in the mornings. Actually, right now the timing of my commute means I see both the sunrise and sunset; on my way into work in the evenings the sun is often tinted in shades of pink, rust, and that warm, slate blue of the sky as the day sinks into dusk. In the mornings I am greeted with a bold orange sun, giving color to everything in view, and bringing light into the fog that clings onto the trees on the hills as the roll on by my window. Consider me grateful.
The days are shortening. We are feeling the tug of the autumn equinox. Have leaves begun to turn where you are? I see hints of it here.
Before we give into nature’s preparation for dormancy let’s pause to savor summer just a wee bit longer. My summer has been fuller than I anticipated, but with good, lovely, hard, and holy things. Such as…
In June we decided it was time to purchase our first home. We saw close to 30 houses, placed offers on four, and finally were successful with a house on the Missouri side of Kansas City. I am so glad the process of searching is over. I can’t say I enjoyed the search. Chaos! Then we closed on the house from the front seat of our car in the parking lot of the title company, thanks to our Covid+ status in the days before. We moved into the house at the beginning of August and are trying to make it ours. Sometimes we wonder what the hell were we thinking? and other times we are excited about having a home that affords us stability, comfort, and opportunities for creativity.
At the end of June, I seized an opportunity to travel to the place that feels more like home than any other. My best friend from college Mendy joined me for 10 days in Cambridge and London, and we saw many of my favorite places and discovered new ones. However the real joy was being with the people that I love and miss, and being reminded that both love and belonging traverse oceans when they are real. I am less threatened by my grief and longing for that place now, having been back and seeing that it is indeed still home.
In July I had the joy of taking a trip to Chicago with my sisters in law and my niece for her sweet sixteenth birthday. What a gift it is to be near enough to love her this way, to delight in her as she inches closer to adulthood, and to soak in her sweetness that is still so pure and childlike. Sixteen is magic. She is magic. On the whole, my relationship with my in-laws has reached new depths since we moved back to the states, and the space that my sisters in particular hold for me has been another place I have found home.
I’m finding belonging at my new job and have enjoyed the camaraderie of colleagues with shared purpose and vision for spiritual care for children. The banter is strong too, which in my opinion is always necessary when the work is so heavy. They have included me in small and big ways that go a long way to me feeling at home even when I am working long, lone hours in the middle of the night.
And finally this week I sent my five year old to kindergarten, and next week I send my two year old to preschool. Neither of them have had full-time care arrangements outside of our home so I anticipate this will be a big adjustment for all of us. And yet, somehow I have a peace that we will each find means of thriving even when it is hard and different. And that when we return to the walls and roof we share, our home will feel like a sanctuary, a holy place where we let our hair down together and find restoration for the day that comes next.
At least that’s my hope.
Despite all of this, there have been plenty of times I’ve not felt at home this summer. Many nights I’ve spent searching job listings in other cities, wondering if I can somehow improve my circumstances to feel more at home. But then I remembered that is my tendency. As an enneagram 1, I am always looking for ways things could be better. I’ve been wondering where the line is between finding contentment and aspiring to achieve your dreams. And about how to create a sense of home for myself and my family even when I don’t feel it.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to explore something of a theology of home in the coming monthly newsletters.
I don’t mean a theology of homemaking or a theology of family life or a guide for how to make our houses reflect Jesus more. I mean to explore what home even is… or isn’t… what makes us feel at home… how the Christian doctrines inform our sense of home. Or do they?
I’m thinking about more than a physical place. I’m thinking about the feelings that places may or may not evoke in us. How do we find or make a home even when it feels out of reach?
I want to dig into the history of Christian expressions and experiences of home. How was home made or found or felt in the Bible? Did any saints or other historical figures write or talk about this? What, if anything, did Jesus say or live that could shape our cultivation of homeliness?
It’s a tall order, I know. I don’t have answers to hardly any of this yet. I just know what I’ve felt and wondered this summer, and now I want to expand the conversation with you. Will you join me?
I’m asking for a two-part comment from you if you’re up for it. Or you can pick just one!
Please tell me about your summer. Let’s treat it like the round robin of summer camps past: what was your high and what was your low?
I would love to include some of your reflections and photos in upcoming newsletters! If you are happy for me to share, please tell us about a place that feels like home to you, and why. Then text or email me a photo of this place. Let me know if it’s ok to include your first name, or if you’d rather be anonymous.
I’m so looking forward to being in conversation with you again. Thanks as ever for supporting and joining me here.
Talk soon,
Janette
I can't believe it's nearly the end of summer! It's so lovely to have Viriditas back in my inbox, and I can't wait for your autumn series.
For what has felt like quite a hard summer, there have been some bright spots that have kept me going through frustration, homesickness, and a difficult time for my family: a caravan holiday with my parents involving a lot of good wine, a dear friend's long-awaiting (COVID-cancelled!) wedding, sharing the joy and excitement of another dear friend's first pregnancy, swimming in the sea and digging in the sand.
Home. This word resonates deeply with me in this season, because my family is completing an enormous renovation project on a home we purchased over a year ago, and had been dreaming about for several years. The process of dreaming up a forever home and pursuing it, putting in the work, and seeing that dream become a reality, has brought with it some unexpected, yet welcome, tension in my spirit. Before we began the project in the spring, I began to sift through some thoughts around building “a dream home” in light of knowing that this world and this home are temporary dwellings as we wait with expectation for our eternal dwelling place. The internal battle was fierce at times. What would this project fulfill and accomplish for me? For my family? What other unfulfilled dreams might this project help to accomplish? Does this project line up with the lifestyle we feel led to live? I could answer many questions that arose, but several required a wrestling, or the answer that I gave it didn’t feel sufficient. None of the questions were touching the practical planning involved. Unsurprising in light of my natural bent towards the depth of all things, what I was wrestling with was, I believe, a search for a “theology of home”.
We are nearing the end of our project, preparing to move into our home, and how I feel about being in our new space is starkly different than how I felt living in its pre-renovated state. I have been noticing and naming the fact that our pre-renovated home (we moved in and lived in it for 1 year before deconstruction) was not my home. It housed our furniture and our “stuff” for a year, but nothing about the house itself ever felt like it was mine. All I could see was what I wanted it to become. It actually felt very difficult for me to invite people into that home. While hospitality ought to be more about the fellowship than the environment, it felt incomplete somehow, like I was sharing myself but that there was something else I wanted to share (provide) that I couldn’t. I made the best of it and humbly hosted people, but it was always with a longing to share an environment that actually meant something to me. I definitely notice an energetic excitement within me now to host people in a space that feels like mine!
I’m curious to explore this subject with you, friend, because I feel deeply connected to the depth of meaning in the concept of “home”.