This summer some of my campers would ask me where my home was. Where was it I lived?
That question opened the gate to something I'd been thinking about for a while.
It's funny if you think about it. The average person grows up living with their parents in a place called "home" for 18 years, and then they go to college, and at least in my case, the idea of home becomes distorted.
They say home is where the heart is. Well what if your heart is in a complex of three different places?
First of all, there is Plano. It is where I grew up for 13 years of my life. It is where some of my friends, my parents and brother are, but it's not where my life is. It's not where I wake up and go to class and eat and study and grow. I kinda feel like it is the in between place. Not that it hasn't meant a lot to me, because it has, but I just feel like God is calling me on in my life. My home church is in Plano and that is the place where a big part of my heart will stay forever.
Then there's Waco. Where I go to school. I feel like this is where God wants me right now. I have formed and am continuing to form relationships that are molding me into who God wants me to be. I have been developing mentally and emotionally and maturing as a person. I have been deepening my faith and have been and am continuing to be challenged in it. I have learned how to proudly say that I am a religion major and that I want to go into ministry, instead of saying it and shying away thinking that others will look down on me.
Livingston. This was my home this summer for about 2 months. In this place I endured hard times, learned about trusting in God completely, giving everything up, being vulnerable, having patience, having forgiveness and many other things. God put me in this place for a huge reason and I can not even begin to try to comprehend the whole thing. I have been transformed this summer. A big chunk of my heart can be found somewhere between the Cho-dome and the Lease at Camp Cho-Yeh. It is where God wanted me to be and where I needed to go.
So maybe home is where the heart is, but if it is then I have three homes. Somewhere in the triangle between Plano, Waco and Livingston I left my heart. The people in all of these places have impacted me in ways that I can say that I have called each of these home at some point. and I have no doubt in my mind that God brought me to all three for a reason.
Usually I would tell my campers that I was from Plano (or I would just say Dallas cause they're all from H-town) but I live in Waco most of the year and camp during the summer.
College is a weird time of transitions.
