No Place Like Home

We didn’t know that leaving our home to travel across the world and live somewhere else for a year would turn out to be an exodus. To be honest, if we’d had the slightest inkling it would turn out the way it did, none of us would have agreed to leave.

The saying goes: “There’s no place like home.” But nobody ever tells you that the truest sense of home will be found while you wander in the desert.

Almost two years ago, we bid fond farewell to Kazakhstan with smiles on our faces. We expected to go away to a place of promise for a while and then return with stories of adventure and gifts to share with friends.

We loaded up into a big van, luggage piled all around us. And we headed off to the airport in the middle of the night, just like we had done so many times before. No teary goodbyes. No memorable fanfare.

This is precisely why experts insist we never take goodbyes for granted though. We need to recognize that every goodbye is crucial. We never know when the promises of going away and coming back will dissolve into a new reality.

For us, it didn’t take long for the novelty of living in America and going to public school to wear off. It was quickly replaced by the oddest sense of not fitting in, even though you look like you should. Unfortunately, failed attempts to fit in could be shrugged off too easily because living here was temporary. A one-year commitment while my husband and I worked through our sabbatical promised that living in America would eventually end.

Here’s where it’s important to point out that honesty is not the easiest policy but truly the best one. We needed to admit to our teenage children when we realized the ground underneath our feet was turning to sand and we weren’t going back to the promised land.

We openly discussed this as a family. Changes in our work pointed to an impending exodus from our one and only life together as a family. The kids’ angry declarations and tears verified our fears. Dashed hopes and broken promises splintered the air.

And so we wandered in a desert, dried out and desperate for answers to questions that only birthed more questions and fear. Who uproots their son for his senior year in high school? Who asks their 14-year-old daughter to start over in a new school in a new country? Not recommended strategies for raising healthy kids.

For weeks my husband and I grieved the pain this caused our kids and feared possible repercussions. Then we received some hard-to-follow advice: “This may be exactly what your son needs to go through to grow up to be a man.” In other words, do not to try and rescue your kids from the struggle God’s allowed them. Here’s where you may need to bite down hard on a stick to endure the impossibly searing pain. Obviously, this goes against every one of your natural, parental instincts.

Accepting our time in the desert – and, taking a moment to wiggle bare toes in hot sand – proved the most effective way through it. This has been where we learned to entrust an unknown future to an all-knowing God. The truest sense of home is discovered in His presence. He provides the stability we long for as we travel from place to place.

To bring closure to our year-long sabbatical our family traveled back to Kazakhstan for an intentional exit out of our life there and move toward a new life. We were able to have some of the tearful goodbyes with some of the fanfare we didn’t have the year before when we had simply said, “see you later.”

This was important. The process of saying goodbye a powerful blend of memories and affirmations, reconciliations and well wishes. Our friends sent us on our way with such gifts, and we tucked them into our hearts and minds to take out later and enjoy wherever in the world we ended up pitching our home.

As we filed into our row of seats on the airplane, we settled in for the last part of our exodus. An experience that established a memorial. We honored what was left behind, what we carried with us and what the future held. How has God met your family’s needs in the coming and going and all the goodbyes?