He Understands Our Longings

I don’t often feel homesick for my passport country. I blame my parents. They took me on my first international flight when I was just eight months old. Once that taste for travel hits, the idea of home becomes more fluid. Actually, I feel the most “at home” in an airport surrounded by rich accents and fascinating subjects for people-watching. I love that transitive sense of being in the almost-there-but-not-yet-arrived.

So it shocked me, my first hot and sticky Christmas in Papua New Guinea, when I found myself homesick to the point of tears. It wasn’t the first time I had celebrated Christmas away from parents and siblings. I had my own immediate family now—my husband, our nephew (who we were temporarily fostering), and our firstborn, who was just a few months away from making his appearance. The intensity of the heat threw me. The lack of Christmas decorations and familiar carols left me feeling that Christmas Day was just another day of the year. My heart longed for something, and I couldn’t even put my finger on what that something was.

Finally, I had the revelation that some of the tears were from grieving my grandpa who had passed away eight months earlier. We had just left for the field when I got the message that he had passed away. It wasn’t possible to turn right around again to attend his funeral. I never fully processed that he was gone. I realized that many of my Christmas memories were connected to road trips to Florida, palm trees and Christmas lights, jokes about fruit cake, picnics at the park, and boat trips with my dad to spot alligators in the nearby canal. I didn’t cry when I heard my grandpa had passed away, but I did at that moment. Christmas at his house had become a thing of the past. My heart longed for what was.

My husband managed to find a copy of It’s a Wonderful Life. Traditionally, my mom and I used to watch this movie over the Christmas holiday. As we watched it together, I felt my heart begin to heal. There could be new traditions, even in this new country, in this new family that was forming and growing.

The next year I was more intentional about finding a few things to help make December feel a bit more “Christmassy”: making sugar cookies to give to friends, adding some advent practices, and hanging a few paper snowflakes on the window. I love the joy and anticipation that surrounds this time of year as we remember and celebrate the perfect gift of a heavenly Savior born in human flesh. He was a vulnerable baby who at times must have cried to communicate. He was a sojourner who lived as a refugee in Egypt and a man who was frequently misunderstood. Jesus often didn’t fit society’s norms. He was a leader who was betrayed by someone who should have supported him. He was a man who knew what it was like not to have a proper home. Emmanuel, God with us. What a beautiful gift. The gift to be known and understood. He understands the longings because he too has been there.

I think one secret for thriving/surviving in this cross-cultural life is coming to accept that you will always be a little bit homesick no matter where your feet land. One way to cope with frequent feelings of being an outsider or misunderstood is knowing that Jesus experienced this as well. He did it perfectly, yet he still had team conflict. It is a good thing to experience feelings of longing. We should long for peace on this often turbulent planet. Our perfect Creator longs for these things too. And as C. S. Lewis so insightfully pointed out, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

I don’t know what your heart is longing for this Christmas season—a white Christmas, a home to decorate, family that’s far away when you wish they were close, language skills to be able to share the message of hope with those you work with—but as you long for things this Christmas that often feel far away, may you rest in the peace of knowing that he is with you, our ever-present Emmanuel.

What Christmas traditions have you been able to reinvent or weave into your life on the field to help you feel less homesick during the holiday season?