Where is Home?

This is a question that has been on our mind as a family for the past 22 plus years. In 1984 when we knew God had called us to be missionaries in the Philippines, we began preparing to leave "home." When our son was 3 and our daughter was a few months old, we had to leave our townhouse that we had purchased and give it back to the bank. It was determined that it would be impossible to sell it so we had no choice but to give it back and fortunately, they accepted in lieu of foreclosure. We moved out at Christmas time that year having lost all our savings into that townhouse. Over the next year (1985) we moved around quite a bit while on deputation and then finally settled into a house in the Philippines more than a year later.

It is hard for a woman to give up her home because of her strong, God-given nesting instinct. I believe one of the major reasons that some women are not willing to become missionaries is that they don't want to leave home.

In the midst of that difficult year of being without our own home, my dad shared Acts 17:24-28 with me that God determines the time and place where we would live so that we would seek Him. That really stuck with me. At one home where we visited in Montana, my friend put on a tape of the Gaithers. The song "Jesus, I Heard You Had a Big House" really spoke to me. Even though we were "homeless" that year, we never slept on the street like those whom we were going to minister to.

After living in the Philippines for 21 years now, I cannot say it is my "home". It isn't. At times I am acutely aware that I am an alien. In fact, I have an "Alien Certificate of Registration" to prove it . But Minnesota is not home either. The truth is that when we became missionaries, we gave up "home". Our kids would not be able to tell you where home is either. Now, I only feel like I'm home when both our kids are with us. At those rare times, it doesn't matter if we are in Minnesota or the Philippines or anywhere else. Home is our family. It is people.We realize more than most that our home is in Glory. We will go home one day but in the meantime, we are sojourners.

We just learned a couple days ago that our daughter has to serve another deployment to Iraq in 2008 with her unit. When she first went to the Middle East, she told me on the phone that there was something strangely familiar about being on the base where she was living. She realized it is because she is an American citizen, living in an American facility in a foreign land. She felt more at home in her deployment than she does at college in Minnesota. That seems strange. It is not easy for her to not feel like she has a home. Her parents are in the Philippines but that is no longer her home. She lives in Minnesota but that is unfamiliar territory to her.

The principle is the same for Micah as Amos in California and for Jeff and me. It is also the same for the street children, squatters and refugees that we minister to. God has determined when and where we will live. "From one man He has made every nation of men to live all over the earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live, so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist,..." (Acts 17:26-28). And might I add, in Him, we are home.