Refugee

This morning in prayer I begged the Lord for a directional word to somehow let me know my decision to move home now is of Him and I received Matthew 2: 6-17 the flight into Egypt basically. I thought this an odd verse this time of year for I have only heard it as it relates to Christmas. I took my coffee out onto the back porch to ponder the words I had read. At first I thought perhaps the Lord was directing me to the two references to dreams in those verses for I had a couple of dreams of late which puzzled me. As I sat trying to listen as I chewed on the words it was revealed to me I am but a refugee returning to a refugee’s home.

I tell people I am going home, but even home is not the home I grew up in, it is the place God blessed my parents with after they lost their home in Katrina. “There is no place like home” was made famous by Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz but where is home? I had been envious of my Irish cousins who have homesteads left to them throughout the centuries a place where families resided and passed down to next generations, but here in America that is not so much. We are a nation of refugees, misfits, and pioneers wanting to make it on our own. We are pretty much all restless souls looking for a place to rest our heads and fit in for a time.

I have been mourning leaving this comfortable place I have called home for the last 22 years. I surely will miss seeing a flash of my children’s faces running down this familiar hallway and in our back yard particularly the bonfire pit. I will miss hitting a memory pocket here and there as I drive throughout Selma past Edgewood  and Meadowview remembering the many ball games my babies played there as kids. I will miss hearing their voices echo up and down our street as their laughter preceded them up the hill to our house. I will miss Selma, this is where I raised our family, but I will take it with me in my mind, and when that goes, it will still be in my heart. I am but a refugee, this is what we do. We take our memories with us and make a new home somewhere else.

Home is where family is, and that does not mean a structure, or familiar baseball fields. Home is where you are loved and can love back. People survive in real refugee camps by forming families and caring about each other and this is what God wanted me to know this morning. He is everywhere because He is family and I am confident that I can leave my home of so many years, to go make another home anywhere, as long as He is with me.  I am made to be adaptable because I know my real home is in Heaven and no matter where I end up I am still a refugee. We are all looking for familiar things wherever we go and God is my familiar, constant in my life. Finally my mind has grasped this concept that I am able to thrive wherever the Lord sends me because He is there too. Look at the Jewish people, they thrived in their exile and prospered, so will I.  I am blessed because I will already have family there waiting to surround me.

So I am a refugee or maybe more of a nomad for I am able to take so many belongings with me at my choosing. Refugees pretty much leave with the clothes on their backs. I am blessed as I pack up my tent and make my way to my next stop, the town I called home for so many years, yet not the house of my youth. I have a long way to go to be a true refugee since I have so much stuff to bring with me to put in storage in hopes of one day having another home to put my belongings into again. I have not real attachment my stuff now. If I lose it all as in a hurricane or tornado, it is of no importance to me, I have what is most important on my person at all times. I have the Lord and like it or not, He has me, and everything else is adaptable. My relationship with Him is all I can take with me back home when I die, the rest of this stuff will rot. It is nothing to me, and will mean nothing “back home”.