Home.

Many years ago when I first dreamt of becoming a medical missionary, I remember different missionaries sharing with me, “Cling on to your homes loosely. Choose simple furniture. Don’t buy cars. Live simply. So when God calls you to go, you will find yourself less bound by these worthless things.”

Three months after marriage, we have only just settled in. Just the sheer thought of having to uproot and leave, to build a new home all over again in a different land, is daunting and overwhelming. Yet, we know that if God calls, we must go. We must leave our lovely walls, pictures hung and decorations all behind. We must leave our jobs. We must leave the people we love, the foods we are familiar with, the sights and sounds of our everyday that we take for granted. The taste of the air and the feel of the ground will all be different.

Faced with what we are facing, I asked you over dinner, “Wouldn’t you feel uprooted? Don’t you want some sense of stability?”

I was thinking my own thoughts aloud, knowing how much I am a creature of routine and obsession. We marry, we buy cars and homes, we climb up job ladders, we make decisions based on what will promote security and stability and comfort and peace in our homes and hearts… and destroy our dreams of youth and adventure because we are each trying to eke out a plot of land we call security, precariously existing until our next life stage upheaves us like a tsunami and leaves us stranded to fight for security again. We pursue these things instead of pursuing God. We are all the same.

You saw the turmoil in my eyes, the agony in my questions. You knew my thoughts. (You always do, you read me like an open book.) But you didn’t flinch.

“Aren’t you afraid? Dreading it?” I persisted. “Don’t you want a place you can call Home, Cliff? Look at this place- we just unpacked.”

“Home?”

“Yeah, Home. You know, a place you can call Home.”

You paused.

Then you smiled and held my hand.

 

“Home is where Wai Jia is.”

 

And all my tense-ness and worry melted into nothingness. Because I remembered the thought I had earlier in the day- that I could lose my job, be replanted into a wildly different environment, be forced to give up things and familiarity… but as long as I could fall asleep next to you and awaken with my head on your chest, it would all be okay.

 

Because where you are, and where God calls the both of us, is where Home will truly be.