Home.
It isn’t a place.
I stood looking at all the boxes I just packed and put into storage. Boxes of stuff I don’t have an immediate need for. Boxes of time and money spent on things to make life easier and hopefully happier. Too many years searching and collecting the wrong things.
I went back home to a mostly empty house, staged and ready to sell. Nothing personal left to hint at who we were. No pictures. No little stickers my daughter placed haphazardly on switch covers. No calendar with plans penciled in. No messes left to clean. All the little things that made it feel like home… were gone.
I don’t know how long I stood in the quiet watching the sunlight flood in through the windows. “Baby steps” I whispered to myself. I am starting with a clean slate. And then I started crying.
I realized the home I had was gone. Not the house I was standing in but the place I made “home” for the past 26 years was gone. It had actually been gone for years already. My family and I have been homeless.
We are selling our house and working on finding a place to live. But we are also searching for a home. I want a home that feels safe and secure. I want to continue being a “home” for my daughter. And then I pictured a few people I know very well and just thinking about them made me feel at home.
I discovered I haven’t been homeless at all.
We find “home” in the people around us. We are at home with the world when we find people who love us and accept us completely. People we can trust to be there for us. Friends and family who make us feel safe and at peace. We can be ANYWHERE as long as they are near.
I have a few people who are home for me.
Who makes you feel at home?
HASTYWORDS 
I love this. And you. And the thought of carrying ‘home’ within the people who matter to me, not in the bricks and mortar (or not) of a particular location.
That said…finding ways to BE with those people is…complicated, too. But yes…baby steps.
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I can think of them and I am home. I kind of thought of Paul’s letter in Phillipians. Something like I will be content in any situation for where you are I am also? I don’t know but that is what came to mind.
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Yes, I like that. Contentment in any situation, because it’s possible.
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I don’t know a place that really feels as home. Perhaps, like a snail, I carry it with me. Or, is it everywhere, or on some transcendent dimension. Am I always,as a song title says (Quicksilver Messenger Service), “just 3 or 4 steps from home?” Oh, the people who have been, are, have yet to be home, yes there is truth in that too.
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This is so beautiful.
I fear I am homeless. I am adrift, and I long for Home. Perhaps it’s true, that it’s always darkest before dawn. I am hopeful, always hopeful. You give me hope. thank you.
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It really is darkest before the dawn. You will know home when you feel it and when you do… peace!
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When it comes to geography, where I am is not my home either. It is 2500 miles west of here with jagged mountains and 300 days of sunshine and friendly neighbors, powder snow, and no humidity. When it comes to home, my Life is here. My son is here, and so I am too. This writing is gorgeous.
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Hugs dear. You have many that care for you deeply and I love it when you write from the heart.
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You know how sometimes the universe sends you things you need to see? This blog post is one of those things for me! Soon enough, I will be listing the house I’ve called a home for the last 8 years. It failed to be a home when my son, 13 at the time, moved across the country to live with his dad. It’s still hard for me to part with the 4 walls though. I bought it all on my own, so even though it harbors some bad memories, it’s still hard for me to let it go. But you’re right–it’s just a house.
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