Home At Last
Piles of cardboard boxes signal yet another transition of home.
Who is there at the end of lonesome roads?
All of us hope there’s a home
A place to reset where wounds get dressed, the table’s full
The sound of laughter in the halls
Light the fire, gather ‘round’
Join together, sing it loud
Raise the glass and joyful be
Home at last, one family
We’re all orphans looking for an open door
Hard times come no more
Come on up to the house of the Lord
Father adopts us all
(Josh Garrels, “Home at Last,” from his 2015 album Home)
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We are moving on Sunday. Not across the country (that was Maxie and I in June 2012), or across the world (that was me in January 2009, before I even knew Maxie), but across the city, aiming to settle more deeply into life here in Cape Town. I’m well aware that many consider moving the third most stressful thing that happens to a person in life, behind death and divorce, and just ahead of major illness and the loss of a job, and while this move has no doubt had it’s fair share of stressful moments (Rain is forecast for Sunday!), it feels noticeably different for me this time.
I’m sure a large part of that is being older and more settled into marriage, plus having a few moves under our belts at this point. And yet if I pause to reflect a little more deeply, I’m struck by just how different our life situation is today, as opposed to almost exactly 3 years ago today, when we were also packing, this time to move across South Africa, leaving our home in Pretoria for the unknown in Cape Town. This weekend, we move with a 14-month infant and a 2-year old Scottish terrier in tow, from a house next door to our good friends to a community along the Indian Ocean filled with even more close friends. To say life is different feels like an understatement of great magnitude.
What is even more evident however is how deeply our family’s definition of home has shifted. For one thing – we are a family unit now! It’s no longer myself as an individual, or Maxie and I as a newly married couple. We are a group – and we are bringing home along with us! For a person who has struggled quite deeply over the years with relational isolation and feelings of failure, to know that my family is my home, and we move are simply moving home from one house to another, speaks a reality of love, intimacy, and potential that I never thought possible for me when I was younger.
I’m looking forward to this move – to settling closer to the coast, to living within walking distance of great community, to inhabiting a larger space for our family – but more than anything else, I’m ecstatic that I am “home at last, one family” (Josh Garrels, “Home At Last”).
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“Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back at any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that – heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.”
(Hebrews 11:13-16, MSG)