You see, nearly six years ago, I left the town I had occupied for eleven years...my personal record. Before I moved to The Metro, where I currently reside, I was an Army brat. I went to nine schools in twelve years. I lived in thirteen or more different homes (mostly apartments). "Home" was always my dad's hometown. We were "from" Central Kansas...even when we lived in a foreign nation. But I didn't KNOW this place. I hadn't lived there since I was a two year old. So essentially, wherever we lived, there was some far away, nearly mythical place where we were "from".
In the grand scheme of life, I understand that "home" is wherever the people you love are. But, I had never known a geographical place inside and out until my family moved to an older suburb in The Metro my senior year of high school. It was there I knew the names of my hardware store cashier, talked at length about life with the cake decorator at my grocery store, and saw various and sundry stores open and close and change hands. I could say, "Man, remember when that restaurant was a video store!" or "Wow, when we first moved here this giant Big Box anchored strip mall was just an empty field!"
In this part of town I knew three or four ways to get to where I was going. I knew who had great Christmas lights and whose kids had a lemonade stand every Saturday. This little suburb is where I shared an apartment with my family...then with just my sister. It is where I met my best friends and my husband. It's where we bought our first house...had our first dog...and had our first baby. I just KNOW this place and have a deep connection with it. It's home.
But, around the time my Big Boy was a year old, my husband and I felt compelled to move from the aged suburb we had started our marriage in to the urban heart of our metro-area. There were many reasons we wanted to change locations, but paramount were our desires to invest our lives in a neighborhood and a school system that needed some love.
Because we are Christians, our first objective was to find a church who had the same heart for the city that we did. After a short search, we found one! When I read their "values" page on their website, I wept because I couldn't have written my values more beautifully. (They've since reworded the values and made them more concise and less poetic, which is a little sad to my writer's soul.) In this new church, the main messages were "God loves you!", "Because God loves you, you can love others!" and "Move to the city!". We desired all of those things, so latching onto God's love, we sold our little 1950s ranch house in the suburbs and moved into a giant Victorian house in the city.
We've continued attending this church. We've built good relationships with our neighbors. We've jumped headlong into the school system. But, I still work in the suburb we left. Our parents and siblings still live in that suburban neighborhood. I shop and go to the doctor/dentist/hair salon in that suburb. So, I really feel like I live in two places. And until recently, I've mostly been fine with it.
Last year, our church (which has grown to be INSANELY large) has planted a church...LITERALLY...LITERALLY in the suburban neighborhood where we used to live...like BLOCKS from our old house. When I heard the new location for the church plant my heart clenched. Why? Why would God ask us to move when He was planning on planting a church that loved the city RIGHT in our old backyard? Why did I have to move miles away from my family and my work? Why did I have to leave the neighborhood that holds my record for "longest town lived in EVER" Frankly, I don't know. I have some spiritual suspicions about the move...but nothing I know for certain.
Tonight, after I leave work (on the same street as the new church plant), I have to roll back into downtown, pick up my kids, and come back down to The Suburb for a meeting at the new church...the church that I KNOW used to be a school, but closed ten years ago...across from my old grocery store...down the street from my doctor's office...a church that I am not part of...and am not sure why. I'm hesitant to go to that meeting tonight. I'm probably going to cry. I miss my home.
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