My stepmother has an embroidered picture that was made by my grandmother (I believe). It is the simple saying that "Home is Where Your Heart Is". While I have a variety of thoughts and reflections on this saying from over the years - it has taken on a multitude of dimensions for me during the past 10 days.
Our home is a house in Danbury where we have 2 dogs (Cooper & Rose) and 2 cats (Mickey & Kaboodle). It is a place where we find rest and comfort; where we make plans and take care of our day to day dealings. It is a place that holds memories that we brought with us into this house and ones that have been formed within its walls. It is a home where we have welcomed others and where we have spent time together. It is more than a house; it is a home and my heart resides there.
Since I last posted, I have found myself not in my own home, but in the hospital with my husband, Michael (check out the details of this week by going to www.caringbridge.org and visit the site for Michael Boyd). This is not home in the same way as the home that we have established in Connecticut. Yet this is home in that my husband is here and he is my home, the place where my heart is. While many things are out of our control (getting rid of this infection, future of another lung transplant), we are able to hold fast to the love that God has entrusted to us to share with one another. And this love is home. (a song that reminds me of this is "Home" by singer-songwriter Ellis Paul; you can listed to it on YouTube)
Yet, home is not only here either. It is with the community that is surrounding us with so many prayers, thoughts and support. This home is spread out from NY to Maryland to Texas to North Carolina and beyond. Home is the love that is holding us up. Home is not a place, but relationships bound together.
Jesus says "let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go and prepare a place for you..." (John 14:1-2)
While we reflect most often on this text in relation to heaven or to some other worldly place of God's kingdom, I have been blessed to experience the dwelling places of God's love through all of these homes. And when my heart is troubled (dramatically so in the past week), I look to the homes where my heart finds peace, comfort, rest and hope. Christ has prepared these homes, these relationships to sustain me, us.
I may be away from our home in Danbury, but I am home, immersed in the dwelling place of Christ.
My dearest and sweetest Jennifer, this touched me so, so much! God has blessed you with gift of word for me even in the midst of our greatest trial to date together. This word from God is uplifting. YOU are uplifting! Your presence and promise and hope has helped sustain me as I have been most vulnerable and anxious. So many unwelcome changes happening so fast and yet still here is God alive and well in our midst! Thank you for your faithfulness and listening ear and caring heart! What a gift of a wife you are to me! Though my earthly dwelling has been in shambles, you have helped remind me where my true home and security lie! Thanks be to God Almighty for it is in God's grace in Christ Jesus that we both abide and live and move and have our being! And, yes, thanks be to this same God for helping sustain us also through the love and support of God's faithful Saints - those in our own families as well as in our community of faith and beyond - even through those from whom we have received God's word from generation to generation! --Michael Boyd.
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