home.

Today, my parents and little brother filled up a U-Haul and said goodbye to our Kansas City home for good.


I admit that I'm a bit of a wreck about it.

This house has been ours for 15 years.  Most of my memories are connected to it, and Liberty by extension.
I do recognize that moving is a very normal life occurrence, as I've had to shuffle my stuff around from place to place in Kirksville for the past three years at school, and I'm about to make the most significant move of my life to Louisville, KY in a few months (What? Crazy.)

But here's the thing: my family's home was not ordinary.
Fifteen years is a lot of life in one place, particularly when you have parents like mine.  I don't know many people quite as warm or welcoming as they are.  I distinctly remember that even when I was much younger, some of my favorite times at home were nights spent eating a good meal and sitting and talking in the living room with company.


When I got a little older, (and went through a "my parents can't possibly be cool" phase), the Lord often humbled me with the realization that my friends loved spending time in our home because they enjoyed my parents so much.  We had so many sweet nights of conversation in that living room with the extra-soft shag carpet (so no one minded plopping down on the floor).  I had several friends who met individually with one of my parents to talk or pray, and a couple friends who went through pre-marital counseling with my mom and dad too.

I've learned a lot about loving people from my parents and in that home.

And because of this, I recognize in myself a longing for things to remain as they were, for that home to belong to my parents for a long time.

"These things-- the beauty, the memory of our own past-- are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.  For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."  -C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

That home was just a place, and God has called my family to another home where he will use them to point more people to himself.

And ultimately, the "thing itself" that Lewis alludes to is our permanent, eternal home with Christ in glory.  This is what we ought to long for.  Praying that, despite the fact that I will miss my Kansas City home (and soon, my Kirksville home) like crazy, that the Lord would teach me to long for the thing itself.