Lost From Home

Home. 

How many songs are written about home? How many lyrics reveal that desperate yearning to return?

Home now means something much deeper to me than it once did. It is more than the small four walls generously providing me a place to sleep at night. It is even more than the house I grew up in or the favorite places of my childhood memories.

Home is that part of my life where I belong, where I am accepted, where I feel loved and supported, whether I am on top of the world or at the absolute bottom. Home is where I can remove my heavy emotional armor and trust the hearts of others towards me. Home is where I feel surrounded by family, even when that "family" is of no blood relation. Home is where my heart finds a place that it has never known---yet somehow always known---and feels a quiet assurance: "Here. This is it. I have found my home."

But life changes on us, doesn't it? Transitions come and go. People change their minds. And now I find myself in a place where more than one of my "homes" are no longer a part of my life.

And I feel lost---in the region where I grew up, in the house I've lived in for seven years, among friends who have stood by my side through my lowest moments. Still, I feel lost.

Sunday afternoon I lie in bed trying not to weep from the pain in my heart, because I was exhausted from the amount of tears that had already escaped me. I closed my eyes and tried to picture Jesus, sitting on my bedside, with his armies of angels behind him. I imagined them pressing closer and closer towards me, eyes full of compassion, heavenly hands reaching out to touch me and cover my brokenness with comfort.

The sweetest, yet most appropriately symbolic dream filled my subconscious as sleep stole over me:

I was lying on the floor of my house---not my current house, but my former residence. Aware of other voices around me, I tried to lift my head and pull myself off the floor, but felt too lifeless to do so---much like my recent reality when, after brushing my teeth, I felt too empty to attempt the next task, so I simply lay down on the bathroom rug. In the dream, I lifted my head but could not pull myself off the floor. 

"I don't know why I'm here again," I murmured, looking through blurry eyes at my surroundings. "This isn't where I was trying to go. I don't understand why I'm back in this place again. I don't know how I got here."

Then a male figure, an unrecognizable yet recognizable male figure, whose face I could not see, came to my side and sat on the floor beside me. He leaned over me, where I lay weak and lifeless, and wrapped his arms around me, placed his head upon me, and clung to me---fiercely, protectively---somehow clinging to my limp body with a combination of strength yet nurturing, and whispering softly in my ear, "Shhh. I'm here. It's okay. I've got you."

Have you ever distinctly experienced one of the seven senses in your dreams? I've heard people claim they only dream in black and white, but I remember dreams alive with vivid colors, dreams where I could once again smell the scent of hyacinth that grew in my grandparents' fence row. And in this particular dream, I could feel the hands of Jesus wrapped tightly around me. I could feel the pressure of the weight of his arms resting against me and the security I felt in his cradling.

And like the dream, I do not understand why, once again, I am back in this same old, unwelcome stage of life. I can't comprehend why I have arrived at the place I was certain I was moving on from. I try to pull myself off the floor and ask whomever is listening,
"WHY am I still here?"

And there is no answer. 

Except the one answer I believe God sent me in that specific dream---
"Shhh. I'm here. It's okay. I've got you." 

Didn't God at times send Joseph, Paul, and others in the Bible dreams for a reason?
I must let myself believe He sent me that bit of comfort in a dream for a reason too.

And in moments when grief feels too heavy for me to carry, I remember myself lying on the floor in that dream which felt so real, the weight of his arms encircling me so securely I could feel them, and hear again those tender words He whispered.

And I try to keep returning to that.

I do feel lost in so much of my life right now.

But he is holding me---

protectively,
attentively,
sheltering me.

And therefore,
though I can't always feel it,
still---

I am
'HOME.'