Where is Your Home?

Where do you call home? Is it where you live with your family or is it somewhere else where your family lives? Is it with another family or friends? I know where my home is now but I couldn't say that six years ago.

For the first ten years of my life I lived in Illinois. Its all I knew. A smaller town where the biggest thing in the town, at that time, was a Super Walmart. It really was great, or so I thought. Then my parents felt that God was calling them somewhere else. Which turned out to be Cincinnati, Ohio. When my parents first told me we where moving to Cincinnati I had no idea where Cincinnati was let a lone Ohio. Cincinnati was a very different place than the small town we had come from. Living in a small town it took only a couple minutes to get to anything (unless you were going to the mall), but living in Cincinnati everything was spread out. What used to take us two minutes to get to church now turned into twenty minutes.

There was a lot to get used to when we moved...a lot. But some how as a family we did. And in the ten years I lived in Cincinnati I grew. I grew up to be a woman. I learned things that I might not have learned living in a small town or had opportunities that I might not have been given. And now I realize I might have not met my amazing husband and had these beautiful children.

No one thought that anyone in our family would ever move back to that small town. (and honestly defiantly not me!) But everything changed when I met Chris. In the summer of 2006 right before I left to move to Houston, TX I feel in love with him. The summer in Texas was hard on a lot of levels but being away from someone you love is even harder. So at the end of that summer I moved back to Illinois with Chris. But it still wasn't what I called home.

For the first three years of our marriage I had still thought of home as where my parents and sisters and brother live. The feeling of not being home was hard especially after I had Caidan and then became pregnant with Kloe. Every time I left Cincinnati those first 3 years I would cry. I wouldn't even be out of Ohio and I would bawling. I hated hugging my family bye because I wanted to cry. But I didn't want them to see it. It wasn't that I was unhappy with Chris or that I didn't like where we were. Its just that my family was somewhere else. My sister are my best friends... so imagine moving away with out your best friend there. Plus I thought that I would always have kids and have my family close by. Another thing that was so hard was knowing that my family wanted us in Cincinnat just as much as I wanted to be there.

I can't tell you the exact time that it all changed for me, but it did. 4 years later! I remember driving into town saying, "We're home!" but when I had said that word "home" it felt like home. Like this is where I am supposed to be. That feeling of wanting to be in another state just didn't exist. The dogs where waiting for us at home. My own bed was at home. Our dysfunction of a life was home. My LIFE is here in my HOME in a small town in Illinois.

The way my perspective changed once I felt like this was home was so very different than I ever thought. I just really never thought that I could be so happy somewhere away from my family. But I was. And I was learning how to do things on my own.

Do you feel out of place where you are now? Do you think home is anywhere but where you are now? I always felt if I was unhappy someone that God would help. I didn't for once think that being unhappy and uncomfortable was just me ignoring what God was showing me. I am so happy here in this small town in Plano. I am part of a church where I have met some very amazing people. I have met moms in all different areas of life. I no longer leave my parents house crying. I no longer dream of living in Cincinnati. Now I dream of whatever Chris I dream about. Cause instead of just wanting to be somewhere other than where I am we can dream about being spontaneous and living somewhere completely different. (not that we would but you never know).

So... Where is Your Home?