Am I Homesick?
“We’ve got to do this at least once a week. I haven’t talked to you in too long! But, let me go now so I can cry.”
It’s been almost two months since I’ve talked to my neighbor. In that time, she’s visited her home country and returned to our host country. I’ve packed up our house, moved back to the United States (home?), spent six weeks visiting family while living out of a suitcase, and attended a Re-entry seminar. A few days after moving into our new “home”, I call her. We FaceTime, and she looks so tired. I know what’s she’s going through, every real, very exhausting detail of starting a new school year. I just want to reach through the screen and hug her. And then, when we hang up, I cry!
Am I homesick?
The same day I receive this text from another dear friend: “We’re driving to the airport. It’s hard to leave my kids behind.”
For so long we’ve been praying that their family will be able to leave our host country. (They’ve been living there as political refugees.) Now an opportunity arises, but the parents have to go first, and hopefully the kids will follow soon. My momma heart breaks. I want to be able to give my friend a hug, rather than just type back encouraging words.
Am I homesick?
It depends. Here in the land of plenty everything is easy. Don’t have what you need to set up house? No worries. It’s just waiting for you down the road. Haven’t driven in 4 years? No worries. It’ll come back to you quickly and without the stress of having to avoid donkeys or pedestrians or pedestrians riding donkeys. And yet, my heart aches.
Am I homesick? YES!
I miss MY community—my closer-than-family-friends that have served beside me in the trenches. Now they’re halfway around the world, and every time I think about them, I pray for them, I look at pictures of them, I feel homesick.
You’d think I’d be used to it after living overseas for nine years. Communities at boarding academies are transient, to say the least. Every year, new people come, you invest in them, and then they go. And every year, I grow attached to someone and my heartbreaks when they leave. It doesn’t seem to recover until after Christmas! Then, inevitably, someone else wheedles their way in and by June, it’s broken once more.
Like when my friend, Joy, moved away from us. I’d often walk to her house with my girls who loved visiting Aunty Joy! When she left, every time I’d walk by the sidewalk that led up to her house, I’d feel the longing and the loss in the pit of my stomach.
A dear friend whose lived this M-life for more years than I have recently told me that transitions don’t get easier, no matter how many times you’ve made them before. And if you are like me and feel the loss of people more than places, it can be particularly hard—this homesickness—because it wants to rob you of new relationships.
My daughters wanted to go to the playground. Still thinking about my friends hurting so far away, I accompanied them. When we arrived, there were at least three other parents there with small children. While my girls played, we snuck peeks at each other. In the end, I slunk off into the shadows and observed cautiously from a distance, hoping to learn more about them and this new community I’m in now. Did I say hello? No. Did I introduce myself? No. Did I hope they’d say hello? Yes! Why? Because I need community!
That’s why I’ve made Danny Gokey’s song, “Tell Your Heart to Beat Again,” my Reentry song.
The life you knew/in a thousand pieces on the floor: Doing life may be easier here, but what about relationships? How do I build those here?
You think you’re never gonna get back/To the you that used to be: Am I ever going to be known and accepted and valued as I was?
Yesterday’s a closing door/You don’t live there anymore/Say goodbye to where you’ve been: How do I balance staying in touch with my past, my friends, and moving forward?
If you’re feeling homesick, or heartsick, for someone you’re missing, whether on the field or back in your home country, all this may sound achingly familiar. But wait, there’s more.
Love’s healing hands have pulled you through/So get back up, take step one/Leave the darkness, feel the sun: Guess I’m gonna have to leave the anonymity of the playground bench!
’Cause your story’s far from over/And your journey’s just begun: Amen!
Tell your heart to beat again!
The only remedy for a broken heart is LOVE. Love’s healing hands. My head knows this (and maybe yours does too), but like the song says, I’m going to need to tell my heart.
Am I homesick? Yes. Will I be homesick forever? Probably not. FaceTime and WhatsApp really close the distance between my yesterday and now. But, if I want to continue in community with others, and get back what I had in my past, the only way forward is to readily LOVE those the Lord places in my path today. When we part, there will be pain, but until then I’ll have Joy, and Karen, and Evelin, and whoever else He blesses me with.
When you feel homesick do you miss places or people more? In times of homesickness, how have you seen “Love’s healing hands” pulling you through? What do you need to tell yourself that your head knows but your heart needs to hear?
Linking up with Velvet Ashes Homesickness
It’s been almost two months since I’ve talked to my neighbor. In that time, she’s visited her home country and returned to our host country. I’ve packed up our house, moved back to the United States (home?), spent six weeks visiting family while living out of a suitcase, and attended a Re-entry seminar. A few days after moving into our new “home”, I call her. We FaceTime, and she looks so tired. I know what’s she’s going through, every real, very exhausting detail of starting a new school year. I just want to reach through the screen and hug her. And then, when we hang up, I cry!
Am I homesick?
The same day I receive this text from another dear friend: “We’re driving to the airport. It’s hard to leave my kids behind.”
For so long we’ve been praying that their family will be able to leave our host country. (They’ve been living there as political refugees.) Now an opportunity arises, but the parents have to go first, and hopefully the kids will follow soon. My momma heart breaks. I want to be able to give my friend a hug, rather than just type back encouraging words.
Am I homesick?
It depends. Here in the land of plenty everything is easy. Don’t have what you need to set up house? No worries. It’s just waiting for you down the road. Haven’t driven in 4 years? No worries. It’ll come back to you quickly and without the stress of having to avoid donkeys or pedestrians or pedestrians riding donkeys. And yet, my heart aches.
Am I homesick? YES!
I miss MY community—my closer-than-family-friends that have served beside me in the trenches. Now they’re halfway around the world, and every time I think about them, I pray for them, I look at pictures of them, I feel homesick.
You’d think I’d be used to it after living overseas for nine years. Communities at boarding academies are transient, to say the least. Every year, new people come, you invest in them, and then they go. And every year, I grow attached to someone and my heartbreaks when they leave. It doesn’t seem to recover until after Christmas! Then, inevitably, someone else wheedles their way in and by June, it’s broken once more.
Like when my friend, Joy, moved away from us. I’d often walk to her house with my girls who loved visiting Aunty Joy! When she left, every time I’d walk by the sidewalk that led up to her house, I’d feel the longing and the loss in the pit of my stomach.
A dear friend whose lived this M-life for more years than I have recently told me that transitions don’t get easier, no matter how many times you’ve made them before. And if you are like me and feel the loss of people more than places, it can be particularly hard—this homesickness—because it wants to rob you of new relationships.
My daughters wanted to go to the playground. Still thinking about my friends hurting so far away, I accompanied them. When we arrived, there were at least three other parents there with small children. While my girls played, we snuck peeks at each other. In the end, I slunk off into the shadows and observed cautiously from a distance, hoping to learn more about them and this new community I’m in now. Did I say hello? No. Did I introduce myself? No. Did I hope they’d say hello? Yes! Why? Because I need community!
That’s why I’ve made Danny Gokey’s song, “Tell Your Heart to Beat Again,” my Reentry song.
The life you knew/in a thousand pieces on the floor: Doing life may be easier here, but what about relationships? How do I build those here?
You think you’re never gonna get back/To the you that used to be: Am I ever going to be known and accepted and valued as I was?
Yesterday’s a closing door/You don’t live there anymore/Say goodbye to where you’ve been: How do I balance staying in touch with my past, my friends, and moving forward?
If you’re feeling homesick, or heartsick, for someone you’re missing, whether on the field or back in your home country, all this may sound achingly familiar. But wait, there’s more.
Love’s healing hands have pulled you through/So get back up, take step one/Leave the darkness, feel the sun: Guess I’m gonna have to leave the anonymity of the playground bench!
’Cause your story’s far from over/And your journey’s just begun: Amen!
Tell your heart to beat again!
The only remedy for a broken heart is LOVE. Love’s healing hands. My head knows this (and maybe yours does too), but like the song says, I’m going to need to tell my heart.
Am I homesick? Yes. Will I be homesick forever? Probably not. FaceTime and WhatsApp really close the distance between my yesterday and now. But, if I want to continue in community with others, and get back what I had in my past, the only way forward is to readily LOVE those the Lord places in my path today. When we part, there will be pain, but until then I’ll have Joy, and Karen, and Evelin, and whoever else He blesses me with.
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| Sharing a Thanksgiving meal with friends |
When you feel homesick do you miss places or people more? In times of homesickness, how have you seen “Love’s healing hands” pulling you through? What do you need to tell yourself that your head knows but your heart needs to hear?
Linking up with Velvet Ashes Homesickness
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