Dorothy said it best. “There’s no place like home.”[1]

Have you ever been homesick? It’s the strangest thing. I can say without a doubt that the one recognizable feeling I have felt my entire life, is homesickness. Is that a feeling? I don’t know. Nonetheless I can recall being a child and feeling like a visitor. Among my family, amid my friendships, in family gatherings, at parties, at special events, on the school playground, in classes, in my very skin, everywhere. I can recall feeling the feeling that I just did not belong. 

The world is not kind to plus size people. So, there is something to be said about the feeling of not “fitting in.” That type of not belonging is different. More on that later! 

Yet, this feeling I speak of is, uncanny. It’s something I have felt my entire life. It’s as if the moment I was born, I felt a longing for a place I’d never known. In this process of dying that we are all experiencing, my heart has been yearning, pining, aching for that finish line of death because the end goal would get me, home. I am realizing that this ache is not for a place, but rather, for a person. 

The Spanish language is extraordinary. I’m not boasting, rather, noting the difference in language and appreciating the other colors I have in my toolbox to try to paint this picture. The feeling I am reaching for is so hard to describe. I am reaching for the English words I know and yet none of them are amounting to the feeling I wish to convey. In Spanish we have several words to describe this feeling. Words like, anhelar, desear, ansiar, querer, suspirar, extrañar. These words usually get translated as yearning, desire, or want. Those emotions are true, but it is so much more. The depth and impact of words are often lost in translation. What I am trying to convey may be lost in that translation as well, but I wonder if someone reading this, gets what I’m laying down.

See, I’ve been meditating on this yearning for a few weeks now. I have a lovely life. The Lord has certainly made beauty out of ashes when it comes to my life. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I sometimes wish I could exchange it all for a taste of connection and intimacy that surpasses what my human mind understands here on this very temporary plane. This earth and everything in it are passing away (1 John 2:17). While people my age are longing for status and goals, I’m, just

Longing for Jesus. 

I want to be in His[2] presence, in His embrace, in His radiance. I want to be facedown before His feet crying and confessing and testifying about His goodness and undeserved love. I want to sing to Him in my cracked and worn voice that resembles the woman with the blood issue (Mt 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-48) responding to him with fear and trembling, bewildered to hear Him call her, “daughter.” I want to fall at His feet and bathe them with my hair and anoint Him with the perfume (Mt 26:6-13; Mark 14:3-9; Luke 7:36-50; John 12:1-8) of thanksgiving as I weep at all the things only, He and I will ever know. Those cold and unkind feelings. Those sour nights of discomfort. Those dark and gruesome memories. The pain and hurt of life and the evil that we do to each other. The oceans of tears I’ve cried that he knew every single intimate detail of motivation for. I want to “play my best for Him”[3] and have Him “smile at me” as my favorite Christmas song states and makes me weep every time!

I

Want

Jesus.

Now, hear me. I am not longing to die or to harm myself. That’s not the end I speak of. This is not suicidal ideation. I’m talking about the end of this temporary body which has paid me with the dividends of brokenness. No, I speak of the ending that is actually a true beginning. The beginning of eternity. The beginning of being my true self, in my true home, with my true Adonai. How I long for my true home. With Jesus.

I’ll be honest, the main reason is because the world is hard to live in. This world is not my home (Phil 3:20; James 4:14; 1 Pet 5:10). I fully recognize and rejoice at the call to be on this earth and make disciples of the nations. I am joyfully on mission. But this lament is simply that. A lament that I am here and not with Him, where the fullness of joy dwells (Ps 16:11). I am homesick, for my home, with Jesus. Simultaneously I rejoice that He is also here, with me. In the mess, the ache, the yearning, the groaning, and the waiting. I am so thankful for Emmanuel, God with us. I am so thankful that He has given me a part of Himself as a seal, to lead me in enduring for the promise of that forever home, one day.

But today, here am I, Lord. Yearning for your physical presence, while abiding in your word, and rejoicing that my heart is your abode until I get to feel that loving embrace I so eagerly pine for. Abide in me, King Jesus. Apart from you I can do, nothing. This world is not my home. I echo Dorothy O Lord, “There’s no place, like home.”

You alone,

are my abode.

More on that later…

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[1] Langley, Noel, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Alan Woolf, Mervyn LeRoy, Herbert Stothart, E. Y. Harburg, Harold Arlen, et al. The Wizard of Oz. United States: Metro Goldwyn Mayer presents, 1939. 

[2] I fully recognize the terrible grammar here, in capitalizing “His.” Yet, it seems so wrong to write about Him with a lowercase letter, because my God is not and never will be lowercase. Sorry grammar geeks. I’m okay being wrong.

[3] Davis, Katherine Kennicott. 1941. Little Drummer Boy (originally Carol of the Drum) Trapp Family, 1951.