Home…Where My Husband Is
After a long day of last-minute packing, final moments and meals with family, and teary goodbyes, a 2 hour, overbooked flight swept me and Aria out West to finally join Greg, (who had moved out there 2 weeks before while I waited for my insurance to kick in).
With my 8-month pregnant belly leaving barely any room for my squirming two-year-old, I gratefully stepped off the plane and into my sweet husband’s arms. Arms that would be a BLESSED help and relief to me, finally sharing the load of our increasingly heavy toddler!
But much more than just a pair of strong arms, over the last 5 years of marriage, this man has become home to me.
Five months of living outside of a physical home of our own, out of suitcases, and in and out of our parents house, has reinforced that truth for me.
That it doesn’t matter where we are. If we’re together as a family, we’re home.
But this also calls to heart the reminder that none of us are ever truly “home” this side of heaven.
“Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” 1 Corinthians 5:1
We, as the “church” at large, are under Christ’s authority. He is her “bridegroom.” This imagery of Christ and the church as bride and bridegroom is all over scripture (Ephesians 5:25, Colossians 1:18, Revelation 21:2).
Therefore, we, as a collective, can say in and out of season and even when we feel the disarray of life in a broken world, “home is where our ‘husband’ (Christ) is.” We can turn to him for that “peace that transcends understanding” that Christ may “guard our hearts and minds” (Phil. 4:6-7).
Walking through the door that night into our new “home,” into an unfamiliar apartment with lots of boxes to unpack and organization to do, I felt the pang of resistance to this foreign space where friends and family were now far behind and nothing felt settled or familiar.
Except…crawling into bed, I felt the familiar weight and form of my husband beside me. His hand on my belly, feeling our soon-to-arrive daughter dancing in my womb sent a warmth through my soul.
The Lord gently reminded me of his unfailing love and provision for our family. He called us here, together, to learn to lean more on Him and to remember that in Him, even in the whirlwind of change, and the unfamiliar, and the “now and not yet” of this world, we are “home.”
