The Home Concept

Coming Home 

Remember two weeks ago? We discussed the movie Garden State at Youth Group and this idea of finding a home. Here's a bit more discussion on the topic.

Andrew: "You know that point in your life when the house you grew up in isn't your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you had some place where you put your stuff, that idea of home is gone."
Samantha:"I still feel at home in my house"
Andrew: "You'll see one day when you move out. It just sort of happens one day, and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesnt even exist. Maybe its like this rite of passage, you know?
You won't ever have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself. You know,for-- For your kids. For the family you start. Its like a cycle or something. I dont know. But I miss the idea of it, you know? Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."
Samantha: "Maybe."

This dialogue was taken from the movie Garden State. There is some truth in those lines and some very relatable sentiment. The reason I mention this is because last year I went back home to Chattanooga for a short visit. I decided to surprise my family and my mom in particular for Mothers day. It was a smashing success and my family have said they will always remember the shock of the surprise. (My dad acted like he saw a ghost and took a double take, my little sis jumped in my arms and my mom cried!)

The temperature outside me was rising as I drove farther into Dixie and my heart started rising with excitement as well. I love my city. I love my friends. I love my family. I love my home. Mere words would not do justice to the emotions of my heart. The whole weekend I felt a sense of privilege for being able to walk amongst the familiar things of home; from walking around my house to walking with friends in old stomping grounds. On the surface the air was alive with the joy of being home and it penetrated deep within my heart but it somehow intermingled there playfully with those haunting flames fanning the very concepts that Andrew from Garden State had verbalized.
I had seen the movie before but I watched it again later after my return to Baltimore and I felt like what he mentioned had grasped some parallel truths that I had experienced that weekend. It wasn’t a new truth but one magnified due to the fact that I actually do live far from “home” now. My family will always be home to me. And Chattanooga will always be my home. And the friends and people I know there will always contribute to that sense of home.
But as I enjoyed every minute of my stay back home, in my parent’s house, with my family, with my friends, with my city, there was still this underlying current that ran through me longing for something deeper yet. My parent’s house no longer felt like home. It was a place where I put my things for a while. I had felt this before as a college graduate when I went back home for a short while and I felt it again as I visited home.

Perhaps those thoughts led to the next epiphany I had further down the road on that same car drive home. This thought captured me quite vividly: that I really desired to start my own home, with my own house, with my own kids, with my own family. (This is without seeing the movie) It was a very sharp thought and desire that struck me and it made me happy to think about it.
All this to say; Andrew Largeman, the character from the movie Garden State, had struck at some very good truth. We all have a concept of home and an undeniable and unexplainable feeling and desire for home. He claims that perhaps family is tied together in that search for the imaginary thing called home.

Well, Hollywood is touching something true but it hasn’t dug deep enough yet.
Home is not an imaginary concept, it’s not the search for home that defines the meaning.
Home is a universal longing we all search for.
As the saying goes, “home is where your heart is”, that’s true too but what if your heart isn’t satisfied with home? What if you return and realize that house you grew up in doesn’t make you feel at home anymore? What if that cycle turns and you establish your family and have your kids and build your home and yet somehow that home you have established still leaves you longing for something more?
The simple truth is, you will always be searching for something more. For a home that will make you feel welcome at last and satisfy that desire to rest in a familiar place.

Later in the movie, Andrew Largeman, finds his home. As he holds the girl he has met and fallen in love with he says the following, “When I’m with you I feel so safe. Like I’m home.” Everyone who knows me knows I am a romantic at heart and I enjoyed that line And when my family grows and I have a cute little house in my little nook of the woods that even though I may feel at home and I may feel safe and on the surface the air will be alive with the joy of being home and it will penetrate deep within my soul, it will ultimately intermingle there playfully with those haunting flames fanning me to someone bigger than myself, bigger than my wife, my kids, my house, my home…..He will be calling me to an eternal home where my longing will finally and completely be met.