Going Home…

If home is where your heart is, then I guess I’m a nomad.

Going home to NY is always like entering a time warp. Technically I’ve lived away more than I’ve lived there, but when I return I feel fifteen again. My grandma no longer lives down stairs and it’s obvious by the growing nieces and cousins that times have changed, but on the inside I feel the same things I felt when I was living there.

Home is very comfortable in a homey, familiar way, but it is still very dysfunctional, yet not as much as it was. Still it’s home. A place where people know me and love me and though I haven’t seen some relatives and friends in years, when I go back it’s like I never left.

My childhood home is a place where people look up to me as “perfect” (LOL) and where to onlookers, I may seem perfect. But I’m not. I never was. I just was a little more moral, disciplined, driven and convicted than those in my family.

But it’s so nice to go home to MY home. My adult home. To not be a daughter and to do things MY way again. Yet my home is different, sometimes not as comfortable and familiar as the home of my youth. I feel more reserved and hidden in my adult home.

Though I get to do things my way, I have more to do. More responsibility. My husband says I laugh more with my extended family. I dont’ have as many friends who really know me like my family does. Maybe I’m trying to hide myself from them. Around my Evangelical Christian friends I feel so imperfect. I’m always striving to be as good as they are, and I never measure up.

Sometimes I wish there was a middle of the road, a home between my past and my present where I can feel comfortable, let down my hair and not worry about stepping on toes, or doing something wrong. A  home where I laugh more and do less. A home filled with unconditional love.

I doubt any such home exists here on earth.  But thankfully, I’m a nomad and will one day make my home in heaven!!!

There’s no place like home!