Sunday, June 10, 2012

There’s truly no place like home, wherever that is.

I’ve been on the road for the last couple of days moving my youngest daughter, Kaitlyn, from Kansas City, Kansas back to South Carolina. It was a fun road trip as we talked and laughed the entire drive home but it was also exhausting too. Too many hours in a car, one night in a hotel room with weird pillows, roadside food, traffic and did I mention too many hours in a car?


I know the adjustment for Kaitlyn will be hard to go from living on your own to living back home and I also know it is temporary. I’m trying to make the transition as smooth as possible for her by backing waaaay off and letting her find her own way. On the other hand (and there always is another hand!) it is weird for me to have her back in the house again. Hello, sharing a bathroom with another female? Lol.

As I crossed over the border into South Carolina again and I knew I was an hour from home, I was relieved to have nearly finished the journey but I also felt like I had made it home. For most of you, that’s no big deal. You lived in your parent’s home growing up and then moved out for college or living on your own or for marriage. You may have moved a handful of times in your life. You knew exactly where home was.

As a preacher’s daughter in a church that moved pastors on a whim, I had moved 30+ times by the time I was 19 years old and left my parents for good. During my entire childhood I never felt that I had a home. The parsonages didn’t belong to us and the places were temporary and short lived. It isn’t good to not have roots and a sense of belonging. My daughters lived their childhoods in two houses. And though I have only moved 3 times in the last 25 years, I still struggle with feeling at “home.” Finally, I feel the area is my home even if I’m not entirely sure about the house.

And that is a pretty amazing feeling – a home at last.

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