Going home

I’d spent maybe 36 hours in Virginia and when I boarded the plane to leave yesterday, I was estatic. It wasn’t because I hated the state or didn’t have a good time. I just wanted to go home.

If you’d asked me in high school, I wouldn’t have ever thought that I’d call anywhere but my parents’ house home. That simple, comfortable house just off Highway 25, stuck between my uncle’s house and my aunt’s house, just down the road from Grandma Ruby’s, a few miles north of Bernie, Mo.–that was home. Somewhere along the line, between my four years at the University of Missouri and the almost five I’ve lived in Nashville, my parents’ house became their house, but not my home. It wasn’t a moment, but a realization that this simply wasn’t home anymore. I still have a room, but it’s just filled with traces of the me I used to be. Some dolls, a few pictures from high school, my Barbies stuck up in the closet, pink paint on the walls. When I visit, I’m only there for a few days and usually live out of suitcases and overnight bags. There’s always comfort and joy in returning there, but it’s a visit.

Nashville is my home. There’s a certain joy, a certain elation, a peace, I feel when I’m driving back from Missouri, and I follow a bend in the road and see the sky line of Nashville suddenly rising up in front of me. “We’re home, Muffie,” I always say. And we are. I love my parents and where they are will always be a comforting home to me, but Nashville’s where I’ve found my own place, my home. It’s where I’ve learned about trusting God, that getting what you think you want isn’t always the best thing, that life usually doesn’t turn out like you expect it to, but sometimes it’s just better that way. Nashville is where I became an adult, not Keith and Gail’s little girl. It’s the city I loved to visit as a child, but the today it’s the city that’s shown me who I want to be. It’s home.