ET Phone Home?

[note: this is in direct response to an unnamed friend’s blog post.]

As friends begin to move away, and life continues to change, I have been thinking about what home means. Four years ago, I never thought I would be able to call Austin home. I hated every bit of this city, and as most of you know, I spent most of my freshman year in College Station.

But time passed, and by some miracle, I remained a Longhorn. And Austin began to feel like home.

As I think more about it, Sugar Land never stopped being home either. It’s home because it’s home to my family and home to people who knew me way back when. But now, Austin is home too. And it’s home because there are people here that I can’t imagine my life without, people I would call family. Granted, none of us are related. But I suppose that in this life, it really doesn’t matter if you share the same DNA. What matters is that we choose to live life together. We choose to bear each other’s burdens, to listen on bad days, to rejoice in God’s blessings, to mourn when things go wrong. We choose to be each other's family.

Home, I’ve learned, is not about bricks and mortar. Home is about people.

And so while it might seem scary to leave the family we’re most familiar with, to move somewhere unknown to a place we wouldn’t necessarily call home, we can take comfort that in each new place await new additions to our family. New people to sharpen, encourage, and enjoy life with. And because we know that our loving God has prepared the way for us, we can be certain that this new place will eventually begin to feel like home. Sooner or later, we will find those people we can’t imagine our lives without.

So go my dear friend and find your new family and make your new city home. This one will be waiting when you’re ready to come back.