A Place Called Home

I grew up somewhat differently than your average Brit. My mother is French and my father was always more continental at heart, so when they married they settled in France. I was born there, and lived in Belgium and Switzerland before I came over to England after leaving school. I then spent my holidays with them in their new place of residence in Bosnia and then Slovakia, then back to Switzerland before they, too, came to live in England.

Many people are taken aback by my upbringing, and the question: “where are you from?” often leads to a half hour story about an international childhood. I grew up with people from all over the world, and became as comfortable with the English in Belgium as I did with the Americans in Switzerland. I enjoyed meeting my sister’s friends from Norway and Afghanistan settled in Bosnia, and was not in the least surprised to see friends move on to places as widespread as Uganda, Canada, Japan and Sweden.

By the end of this month, I will have lived in England for longer than I have ever lived in one place. I have moved often while I’ve been here, but 10 years in one country is still quite an achievement for me.

Here’s the thing though: I still wouldn’t call England my home. The truth is, there is no place I would definitively call “home”. I was brought up in international communities where the norm was moving around and learning to adapt, settle quickly and make loyal friends in a heartbeat. I praise God for it, because those skills have served me very well over the years. I hope I can give my own children a glimpse of that life.

But home – that is a concept sometimes foreign to those of us who have travelled and settled in more than one place. And I’m slowly learning the blessing of this. Because I realise I am perhaps more aware than some that my home is not an earthly place. It is not a house in Italy or an apartment in Paris. It is not a country or a town, or even the people I’ve loved and met along the way. All of those things play a part in what I call “home”, and they have all made me who I am today, but home, my true home, cannot be found here.

I am a pilgrim by nature, because of my upbringing. I love to travel and explore new cultures and overcome the fear of change for the excitement of the new. I love hearing the stories of very different people. I love living those stories with them. But you don’t need those experiences to be a pilgrim. We are all pilgrims. And our home, our true and lasting home, is with God.

So where am I from? So many different places. And yet just one: heaven. It was, is and will be my home. I will never be fully settled wherever I am here on earth. Because I was not made for any one country here. I was made to be with God.

Well, it’s not hard to see
Anyone who looks at me
Knows I am just a rolling stone
Never landing anyplace to call my own
To call my own

Well, it seems like so long ago
But it really ain’t you know
I started out a crazy kid
Miracle I made it through the things I did
The things I did

I had a chance to settle down
Get a job and live in town
Work in some old factory
I never liked the foreman standing over me
Over me

Oh I’d rather walk a winding road
Rather know the things I know
See the world with my own eyes
No regrets, no looking back, no goodbyes
No goodbyes

– Kim Richey, “A Place Called Home”