College seems to be the stereotypical time to talk about home... and I've come to realize that I fit a lot of stereotypes, and that's ok. Whatever, here it goes.
I'm sitting in an old chair. A chair that used to be in Sierra Roasting Company. In high school, that place was home. It was home before I worked there, and then it was home when I worked there, 9 months, 18 hours a week, it was home. Senior year it was still home, an escape, safe and calm, never-changing home. And now it is gone, the chairs and tables have been recycled into another coffee shop that I now sit in. A remnant of home.
I call both Westmont and Rocklin home. I switch between them. Westmont is home, but not Santa Barbara, and I don't think that will come with more time spent there. My car is the most stable home I have at this time of life. But the Santa Barbara roads aren't home, the lanes are two small and the one ways are terrible. But I love driving in Nor Cal. There is freedom in the wide lanes for my songs and thoughts.
And yes, people make you feel at home, that is why I use the name for both places, but for it's more than the people. It is the familiarity with the place. Or is familiarity not enough, must you enjoy that which is familiar to call it home? Or is it merely just a choice of what your home will become? We are at home in the Lord alone, and our feelings towards one home or another are divinely given?
Soon I'll be going to another home, Woodleaf. But the people always change there, and it is not just familiar. I sense the presence of the Lord so strongly in those trees. I am home in my Father's house. The smell of the Dining Halls, the way the air feels on your face in the early morning, the constellations, the old pond, the red dirt.
The way camp seems to set my soul free. But that is not Young Life's doing. That is the presence of God. A love that sets us free. A love that sets us FREE. All encompassing, accepting, forgiving love that sets us free.
We find our home in his freedom. We find our home in his freedom.
