Home-Making

This week in class we were learning the vocabulary word 'habitat' and the definition given in the text was 'where something makes its home.' This started me thinking about homes. My students' idea that a home is "the place where you live" didn't satisfy me, and even "where your family is" or "where you've been the longest" seemed too narrow of a description. The only qualifier that encompassed all of my feelings was this: A home is where part of your heart will be forever.

I feel like I've had a lot of homes already. Oregon, of course, where I have spent so many wonderful years with family and friends, is home. So are certain places in Utah where I have lived while going to school. Belgium is another; even though I was only there for a few months, it was a home by the time I left.

Unlike Voldemort, who was unaware of his splitting soul when he inadvertently created a seventh horcrux, I always know when a piece of my heart is left behind. I remember the day I arrived by boat in Cagliari, Italy, and I knew immediately that when I did have to leave this city it would be a painful parting. I woke up every morning loving something new about it, from the birds flying outside our 5th story window, to the people who invited us - as random strangers - to have dinner with them, to the fruit that would fall on my head as we jogged under date trees in the city. When I got word that I would have to leave I felt physical pain that I hadn't experienced so acutely before, nor have I since. I knew that my heart would always ache for the substantial piece severed and left behind in Cagliari.

Other homes have been added since then, and I keep wondering how my heart can still function, being spread as thinly as it is. Sometimes I even feel disloyal knowing that even as I am leaving one home, I will find another. And in certain moments my heart aches for something that will last, something that won't change and that I will never have to leave behind.

This feeling of being "homesick for heaven," as I learned to call it, reminds me that the biggest piece of my heart was left behind a long time ago, when I left my Heavenly home to make a new one on earth. And as much as I love all of my homes here and now, I am excited to return to that one some day, hopefully to stay. :)