Home

Home is a difficult concept for people like us. As I noted in a previous post, we don't use it about a country.

I was talking this morning to an older lady whose been living on and off in China over the last 10 years with her theological lecturer husband. They're not sure where to settle after this phase of their life is over.  She listed off several factors they are considering: 

• Apartment vs small house.
• This town or that. 
• Near family or friends.
• Country town or city. 
• This state or the one just south.

They're not even sure if this phase of travelling between the two countries is over yet.

The truth is that what you call "settled" and "home" gets messed around when you move around a bit. Even more when you spend enough time to put down roots in more than one location.

We've just spent the weekend at my parents' house in the town I spent the first 17 years of my life. For a long time I called that town home.

View from "home" an hour or so after we arrived.

Even though we wanted to visit my family, it was hard to pack up and go there on Friday. But we had a good time and we've come back feeling relaxed and rested. The surprise we got when we came back to our house is an overwhelming sense of coming home.

It makes sense, though,  and it makes me happy.  We've spent the last month or so getting ourselves settled here.

Particularly we paid attention to getting the boys as settled as we could. Seems like it has worked. We have managed to successfully create a homebase, a place to call home for this year. It makes me happy because that will make the year easier on us all.