When I Can’t Hold Home Together

On a Sunday morning last August, I dropped the kids off to their Sunday morning classes and made my way to the sanctuary, intentionally keeping my face averted so I would not have to engage in too many conversations. This was not like me. I enjoy greeting people and making them feel known and seen.

But I didn’t want to be seen in this moment. My emotions were taking over, pressing at the surface, and I needed to find a corner to settle in before they overflowed. So instead of finding a seat on the lower level, I walked up the side stairs, sitting down in the back corner of our balcony. And I cried rivers of strange grief.

Which was odd because this was my home.

It was not just the city I was born in and lived in most of my life. I got married here and had my babies here. I’d been attending this church since I was sixteen years old. I’d spent my twenties and early thirties here working, serving, ministering, and leading. This is the place that supported our family, prayed for us, and sent us off into the land that we just returned from.

After six years in Iceland, we were one week into a move back to Alabama. Our hands were open to God’s timing, not knowing if this would just be a year or longer. So much uncertainty was wrapped up in this transition. There were so many layers that I couldn’t even comprehend enough to unpack. My kids had just started new schools within days of our arrival, and my husband had flown back to Iceland for a couple of weeks to finish out some responsibilities that we still had. I couldn’t yet name how I was really feeling, and I didn’t quite know where to step besides into the corner of that balcony, shadowed so that I could cry without anyone seeing me.

This was home, is home. My mom and siblings were a drive away now instead of a flight away. Here were friends and coworkers I had known for decades. I attended and graduated from high school here, earned my graduate degree here.

I knew these roads and streets, but they had shifted. There were new buildings and landmarks, re-routes, and reconstruction. I knew all these people, but they all had experiences that I hadn’t been here for and had only viewed through the lens of social media. My kids were born here, but they spent six years in another culture and in another language, and that impacted their academics in ways I hadn’t even considered.

I was from here, but the me that left was not the same person who arrived.

I didn’t know how to hold all of it together.

But maybe that was the point. I couldn’t hold it all. As I sat there under the shadows in the corner of that balcony, there was no immediate solution. And as I continued to process our transition over the next few months, there was no tangible turning point where it all finally made sense. But what I have discovered within this time back is that I don’t have to hold home together and make it fit within my constructs. Especially since home is now across continents, contained in both Iceland and Alabama. In these times of transition, especially when we are returning to a familiar place that has so many unfamiliar pieces, instead of working to hold home together, we can allow home to hold us. We can rest under a covenant that never changes.

One of the stories that’s been the most comforting to me lately is the one of Ruth and Naomi. Naomi had her own process of reentry. She left her homeland full and returned empty. She was a different person, but out of the overflow of that, I love how she encouraged her daughter-in-law, who was stepping out into her own new season.

Naomi encouraged Ruth to go to Boaz because he was their kinsman-redeemer. He had the ability to set things right and make a home for them. When Ruth approached him, she asked him to take her under his wing, which means to spread the corner of his garment over her (Ruth 3:8–9). She asked him to shelter her, to cover her, to basically set up home for her with him.

Almost a year after our move, this is starting to become my daily prayer. Lord, set your garment over us, over me, in a place that is familiar but has so many components of unfamiliarity, so much change. Lord, I don’t want to strive to make home here, would you cover us and set up home for us? Remind me of the covenant you have with me. Please spread your garment over me and tuck me under your wings.

From that place there is an anchoring and a peace that no distance or change can shift. There is surrender in that because it’s not me trying to hold home together but reminding me, Lord, home is wherever you are, and it is the promise you have set over me.

As you consider the story of Ruth and Naomi, what stands out to you the most? How does this speak to you of home and maybe your own transition out of, or back into, it?