Homesickness

Our Florida weather’s been beautiful lately. Blue skies and temperatures in the eighties. But the northerner in me is disoriented. I look at the calendar and it says October. We had fun at the beach last weekend, but shouldn’t we be picking apples with our jackets on, drinking hot cider by the fire?

Fall, my favorite season, is when I miss my family up north the most. My dad died of cancer three years ago this November, and the pull toward my mom’s house in Michigan gets stronger as we pass the anniversaries—the day he was diagnosed with cancer, the day hospice moved in, the day of his death, and then his funeral. It feels strange to be 1200 miles away instead of sitting at my mom’s table. For me the images of fall—cool gray skies, pumpkins, and copper-colored trees—are connected to memories of my dad, and this time of year I am often overwhelmed by one thought: I want to go home.

In The Prodigal God, Pastor Tim Keller writes, “The memory of home seems to be powerfully evoked by certain sights, sounds, and even smells. But they can only arouse a desire they can’t fulfill.” He describes the many people in his church who have shared with him their frustration over the holidays, how they get excited every year, but only end up let down when reality doesn’t meet their expectations. “We are all exiles, longing for home. We are always traveling, never arriving,” Keller writes. “Home continues to evade us.”

There are many things I’d appreciate if I were to suddenly find myself in my mom’s kitchen—a long conversation with my mom over coffee, laughing with my sisters about whatever, the feel of a sweater on my arms. But my dad will not be there. Neither will all of my siblings. The last month of my dad’s life, when we all ate dinner together in a circle around the fire, is a short, closed chapter in our family history. Even if we were to find ourselves in a similar situation, we would still have the nagging sensation that something’s not quite as it should be.

Keller says we feel like exiles because God created us to live with Him in the garden, but we chose to push Him away. Our sin brought sickness, destruction, and death into the world, so we will never feel completely at home here. C. S. Lewis called it “spiritual homesickness,” saying our sense of disappointment reveals our need for Christ. “Our life-long nostalgia,” he says, “our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation.” We belong with Jesus and we won’t be fully at peace until we’re with Him in the flesh.

I miss my family up north a lot. But lately when something (like those darn Pumpkin Spice lattes at Starbucks) triggers that sharp longing for home, I find myself thinking about my family, but then also about the deeper truth—that the home I really want, the place I ultimately belong, is with Jesus. And somehow remembering that makes it easier to move beyond the homesickness and enjoy whatever the day holds. Even if it’s a hot October afternoon at the beach.

“Set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.” – Colossians 3:1b-3