Somewhere along the way in this globally mobile life, I subconsciously and mistakenly adhered to the idea that other people – the non-globally mobile folks – don’t move. Our life is so chaotic in its never-ending transitions that I, apparently, fell into a false belief that no one else does what we do, not even a little bit.
Who else goes back and forth regularly between passport country and country of service, packing up belongings with practiced precision? To be on the move is part and parcel of the expat life. As we’ve spent the past several months in America for our home assignment, I’ve felt validated in the uniqueness of our globally mobile life because several people have told me as much. “You move around so much. We can’t imagine doing that.”
While it’s true that most people don’t move around so much, it’s also true that people do move. Which is what I apparently forgot, or didn’t want to believe, because it was better for my emotional well-being to lean on the assumed stability of those who stay put.
People who stay put offer an anchor to those of us who move around. When the anchor is pulled up, we don’t always know where to land anymore.
So when my parents told us they’d decided to move from my hometown – the only place I’d grown up and the only place our family had landed during home assignments in the States – I suddenly realized how much I’d depended on their stability to extend itself onto us. Their rootedness had offered roots to us too, an anchor that I never imagined being pulled up.
I recently reread the story of Cain and Abel and found myself gobsmacked by Cain’s curse. While the first part is bad enough – the ground will no longer yield crops for him – it was the second part that haunted me: “You will be a restless wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:12b).
The curse of Cain was to wander the earth, to be rootless, to have no particular place to call home. What a curse! To not know where you belong, to be unable to put down roots and thus consign your children to the same rootlessness as you with no sense of home. It’s no wonder Cain responded with, “My punishment is more than I can bear.”
The Lord’s punishment was just, as are all His judgements, yet I can’t help but feel empathy for the world’s first murderer. I never could have understood such a consequence before becoming a wanderer myself, albeit by God’s calling rather than His consequences. But what a shock to realize that God’s calling on my life was another person’s punishment.
Being unable to answer the question, “Where is home?” is a unique struggle that few people face. As expats, we sometimes even wear the struggle like a badge of honor, often reminding ourselves of the profound and comforting quote from Tolkien: “Not all those who wander are lost.”
Although Tolkien clearly meant that the journey can be its own end where we find meaning and purpose, and although I believe that to be true, it’s also true that some of those who wander are indeed lost. Some are wanderers, by definition, because they don’t know which way will lead them home.
That is how I feel. I am a wanderer, lost, unable to answer the question, “Where is home?” My answer to this question has become nearly as confusing and convoluted as my children’s answer, which attempts to explain that their parents are from different states and where they were born is different than where they live when they’re in America which is different from where they now live in Kenya which is different than where they used to live in Kenya.
Part of the problem is that American culture doesn’t clearly define “home.” In the culture where we live in Kenya, “home” is where the family hails from. No matter where you may travel or end up living, your home is at the shamba, the “home place” where your family has lived for generations. Granted, it’s relatively easy to define since most of the family doesn’t move anywhere – subsistence farmers tend to stay put.
Still, it’s deeply entrenched in a person from the day they’re born that home is the land where the family is from, and anyone who does leave (for a job or school or whatever else) can come home anytime and be welcomed and feel at home. Furthermore, it’s expected that everyone will be buried at home, at the shamba. No matter where you are when you die, you should be buried at home to rest there forever.
I’ve acquired enough of an appreciation for this aspect of Kenyan culture to wish that my own American culture was more like it. It’s fairly easy for a Kenyan to answer the question, “Where is home?” I wish it were that easy for me.
The one place on earth that I feel most at home is my parents’ house, the one they are moving away from. If I were Kenyan, I could be buried there, preferably by the pond where the pine trees grow.
As I was processing and grieving the upcoming change that means I’ll never set foot in my childhood home again, I confessed to our kids that my parents’ house is where I feel most at home in the world. Our son instantly questioned me. “You don’t think [where we live in Africa] is home?” Well, yes, I do. But also, no. It certainly defines “home” for all five of us together, but would I want to be buried there? Probably not.
Even before the current rootlessness I feel, I’ve spent years helping our third culture kids think about home this way: “Whenever we’re together, we’re home.” Or another iteration: “Wherever we’re together, we’re home.” Home is not a place, but the people we are with.
As I cling to my people through this transition, I’m reminded that no matter how rooted or rootless we feel on this earth, not one of us is truly at home here. As C.S. Lewis so succinctly said, “We were made for another world.”
Psalm 90:1 says it best: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.” Even those who have a shamba to return to where the family has lived for generations will never fully be at home. Our home is not a place, but a Person. The Lord alone is an anchor that will never be pulled up. His promises to me – to love me forever and never leave or forsake me – are the only roots I need.
In the same stanza with that famous Tolkien line about wanderers is another line: “Deep roots are not reached by the frost.” Deep roots – the deepest of roots – will not be reached by whatever in this world attempts to freeze them. Deep roots in Christ are not reached by the transitions of others. They are not reached by an inability to answer the question, “Where is home?” They are not reached by any fear or grief or loss of place.
Deep roots remain rooted. What a comfort that is to this sometimes restless wanderer.
Photo from Pixabay
