Homesick

As I sit down to write, my family and I are enjoying a much needed and restful vacation. Yet I find myself thinking of home. Do you remember that terrifying feeling you used to get as a child when you were away from home or your parents, for too long? For me it was a gut-wrenching, terrifying, claustrophobic feeling. I’d become physically sick. As a kid, being homesick was the worst. I was homesick a lot, even when I was only a few miles down the road from my parents. But we grow out of that right? 

As adults, my husband and I moved a lot in the first years of our marriage. We were moving for college, and for his job; we moved every year, for eight years into new homes, and into four different states. Those feelings of being homesick did not travel with me, because we weren’t in any home long enough to miss it. We enjoyed it; the thrill of new adventures, new homes, new friends; the kind of friends who become family. So, when we finally settled down into our current home four years ago, it was home. It still is home - we love our church family and our community. 

On our first big family vacation after settling down, those homesick feelings came over me and I couldn’t place them. About halfway through our vacation, I became terrified. My heart dropped into my stomach. I started gasping for air as I walked past my husband. Cue the waterworks from me. Here I am with that gut-wrenching childhood fear, and I could not place it. My husband placed it for me, “Honey, you’re homesick.” Hold the phone….what? I haven’t been homesick in over a decade, and now I’m homesick? Yes, I was. It happened on this vacation, too. 

Our oldest is experiencing homesickness for the first time, as we are preparing to leave for home in a couple days. He couldn’t figure out why he missed home, when we were having so much fun on vacation. He didn’t want to leave, but he didn’t want to stay either. He was missing everything that encompasses the comforts of home. 

I think that sums up how we feel as Christians here on earth. We don’t want to leave, we have so many blessings here on earth. Family, friends, church families, fulfilling careers, warm homes, new gadgets, home-cooked meals; the list of God’s earthly blessings is quite a long one. All of these blessings, and yet, we know they are finite. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy” (Matthew 6:19). Death is not something we like to think about, but we don’t really want to stay here forever, either. Our world is broken. Sinful. Decaying. Isaiah 51 tells us: “the earth will wear out like a garment, and its inhabitants die like flies.” We long to be in our heavenly home. “But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail.” (Isaiah 51:6). 

Do you feel that “homesickness” for Heaven? For being with your Savior? Do you long to be away from here? As a believer, I know you do. Heaven is our home. Ephesians 5 talks about our longing to be with God: 

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.

For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord”. (Ephesians 5:1-8). 

Job’s yearning can also be described as our own: 

“I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19: 25-27). 

Just as our oldest was excited and ready to go home from vacation, without knowing when we were going to get there…we, as believers, look forward to being in our heavenly home. We don’t know when we’ll get there, when God will call us to be with him; but we know that we are going to Heaven, and we eagerly look forward to the joy and comfort that awaits us in our Heavenly Home. 

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:1-4)