I just went home. I am not talking about the home which my husband and I have created with our kids over the past 20 something years in Georgia, but the home I was born into to. The family, friends, neighborhood and church where I grew up.
My best friends’ daughter was getting married and so we traveled back to my old neighborhood. Best friend really does not quite capture the essence of our friendship. You see our mothers were friends and I have this image in my head of my mother rocking my friend to sleep while she was pregnant with me. Before I even entered into the world I knew and loved this person and in almost 60 years we have remained bonded by what God put together before I was born. Going home means seeing my friend. Seeing my friend brings me such joy.
I am one of the few people I knew growing up that left the neighborhood. Many of my friends bought their parents houses. There is a neighborhood bar that holds a charity event every Friday night and most Fridays that is where you will find all the neighbors. The Friday we were there was no different. There were faces I had not seen in years, but as soon as I did it was as if those years disappeared. My family heard stories of what I was like growing up, stories that only these people could share. The wedding brought even more people I knew from my past together. People I have loved my whole life. People I forgot I needed in my life. It was an amazing time. I was home.
The plane ride home gave me so much time to reflect. Part of me was sad. Why did I leave the place I loved so much? Why did I leave my best friend? What would life look like if I had stayed? I have a wonderful life, but there is a hole that exists, and that hole can only be filled by returning home.
This time of reflection gave me the chance to dig a little deeper. My experience returning home personally made me think about returning home spiritually. For me it all connects. I formed a deep and lasting relationship with someone before I was even born. That relationship is like breath for me. My neighborhood and the friends who still live there and show me love and such a sense of community. I left this place. My life took a different path, but I can always go home. No fear, no judgment, no hate, just love.
Isn’t that what our faith life is all about? We develop a relationship with God before we are even born that is never ending and life giving. We can wander away from and come back only to wander away again, but every time we do, we feel that hole fill up, empty only to be filled again. We could leave the church, but the church never leaves us. When we decide to return the community of God accepts you, no judgment, no fear, no hate just love. Returning home gives me such a sense of belonging, such a sense of peace. Returning to Jesus, to the church to the community of God brings me that same sense of belonging and that same sense of peace. This wonderful wedding weekend reminded me that personally and spiritually I can always go home and there the hole of longing will always be filled.
Jackie Sullivan