If you feel untethered.

This isn’t my house, but I live here.

Which sometimes feels sticky and complicated. Finding home, when you don’t have one.

I’m 29 years old and I still cry every time I leave my parent’s house. I haven’t lived there in over 10 years, but it’s still hard to leave. The house my dad built with his own two hands. The place I lived from 4 to 18. Where my parents brought home the final 2 of my 3 siblings. The place I make my parents swear they’ll never sell. It no longer feels like it used to. It still holds the hugs from my mom and the “pep” talks from my dad. The people that made me, me.

I think part of me has been desperately chasing the feeling of home since the humid August afternoon I left for college. The sense of belonging, safety, and familiarity. The sameness and commitment to stay. Childhood and freedom. No fear or worries. It’s not the same though. Maybe that’s the real reason I cry when I leave.

Maybe that’s also the reason anxiety kicks in when life changes. Because I want good things to stay the same.

Lately, too many things are changing and my heart can’t keep up. It feels the opposite of all those feelings I’m chasing. Insecure and uncertain. Like everyone else is moving on without me. Other people’s decisions are impacting my life in ways I don’t want them to.

My pastor encouraged me the other day to find my “rocks”. The things in my life that aren’t movable, the things I’m choosing to hold me down. Besides my faith which is the ultimate anchor, is it the house I live in? The city I live in? The job I have? The people I call community? What am I committing to? What should I anchor myself to?

What does it look like to pick my rocks when I’m not tethered to anything? 10 years, 3 apartments, 7 houses and 18 roommates later, do I know what home even is anymore?

It feels hard to figure those out on my own. In a city I call home, but far away from a town that no longer feels like it is. But I’m committed to figure it out.

When I think about the rocks I want to pick, so many of them feel attached to other people’s decisions. The choices feel one-sided. Which feels unfair.

But I don’t think God expects life to just happen to us. I think He gives us room to make choices and decisions. I think He empowers us by the Holy Spirit to change our perspective and leads us to take action. I so easily get caught up in feeling like a victim, but I don’t have to live that way. You don’t either.

Circumstances will change, and we can’t control when they do. Instead of picking rocks that are circumstantial, we can pick rocks based on what we value.

It’s not as much about the circumstance, but what we value about those circumstances.

For example, if I want one of my rocks to be the neighborhood I live in, what happens when my friends decide to move? The value of living in close proximity to people I do life with is something I can find, even if the way it looks right now changes.

What do you value? How can you apply those values to your life, even when circumstances change?

Maybe you feel unattached to your job, but you aren’t sure if you want to leave. Is it the company you work for that you value? Or is it the skills you get to use? Or the work you get to do? Regardless of it your job changes, you can anchor yourself in what you value in work.

Maybe it feels hard to decide because you don’t have a family to make decisions with. But what are you searching for about family? The security? The camaraderie? How can you find that in community in this season?

God gives us choices here, ways to find home in the in between.

As I figure out the rocks, I also have to learn to find home where my two feet are planted. Whether they are growing deep roots in the ground, or just blooming until they outgrow the pot they are planted in.

I’m learning to be at home in my own body, even if it doesn’t look the same as it did before.

To find home in myself. To be okay with who I am, even if it’s not who I was or who I thought it would be.

To find the things that give me the feeling of home again no matter how silly or small they are.

To create home in community, even if they aren’t family.

To be okay with knowing this isn’t home forever.

Maybe this is all part of growing up, or maybe it’s an invitation to something deeper.

Maybe it’s God’s way of showing us what really matters.

That’s not an answer neatly tied in a bow, but it’s a gift for us to unwrap nonetheless. The gift of home wherever we find it today, and the gift of home to come.

Always, Meghan