Home is Where the Heart is

It was when I was two months gone

That my mum called me

To ask how I’m getting along

“I’m fine,” I said

“I’m just on my way home”

Hope and unbelief in her voice

“Oh, darling, you’re coming home?”

Me, I closed my eyes

Sighed

“No, I mean home here”

Silence

Then she sighed

“Of course, well all right,

I miss you

Take care, little one”

“I love you,” I said

Before I ended the call

And started to wonder about

That not long ago

This place was unknown to me

And now is called home

Can it be that two places feel like home at the same time?

And that being at one place

That now feels like home

You’re still homesick for that other place

Which, despite it still being home,

Now feels like you’ve outgrown?

They say “Home is where the heart is”

Well, what if my heart is here and there?

And what if on both ends I have people

That I wouldn’t dare

To live without because they’re family?

I wondered where I belong and which place is my own

The place I grew up in or the place I love now

I continued to walk towards the place I called home,

Through streets that are lovely but still were unknown

Philippians four verse seven* comes to my mind

“Because you belong to Christ Jesus… “ it says

And again I sighed

Did I not give my heart to Jesus

That day when I realized

He wouldn’t leave me alone?

So when my heart is Jesus’ own

And I wonder “Where is home?”

Should I not think of His promise of an eternal home

Rather than earthly places that, as I know now,

Can change as quickly as seasons from

Known to unknown and foreign to home?

“Home is where the heart is”

And my heart is Jesus’ own

So as long as He hasn’t left me

I can say

“I’m on my way home”

Home to the place where He has set me right now

And home to Him

Who has, I know,

Prepared a room in His house for me

To call heaven my home

*Contemporary English Version (CEV) 

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