Home

I’m no longer homeless.  At the end of my day, I go home.  To my place.  For the first time in 7 months – nearly eight, all my belongings are in the same place.  I am sleeping in my bed.  I have a permanent address.  Slowly, boxes are being unpacked, dishes are going into kitchen cupboards, and everything is finding it’s place.  Faulkner is settling in and realizing that each morning after my shower, we go for a walk and each evening when I get home, we go for another.  We are settling in; nesting.  We are home.

I am centered.  I feel happier.  I am more at peace.  Nothing else in my life has changed except that I moved into my own apartment.  There is a lot of chaos in my life.  I'm juggling a lot of responsibilities.  I'm still struggling financially.  I'm still working through a lot of emotions.  But I no longer feel displaced or unsettled.  I belong.  I have a home.

I have a better understanding of what it must feel like to experience homelessness and although I say I was homeless, I wasn’t really.  I had friends who welcomed me into their home and treated me as if it was my home too.  I was never in danger of being on the street.  I was never at risk of going hungry, being cold or wet or in physical danger.  For me it was an emotional/spiritual homelessness.  But for the thousands of men and women and children everyday who are truly homeless, it’s emotional and spiritual and mental and physical.

God gave me a small sense of what homelessness is like so that as I’m working with congregations to develop affordable housing the agitation I already felt about homelessness would be more intense than it used to be.  The appreciation for home I thought I had, would be considerably more intense than it used to be.  God wanted me to really get it.

Lord, may I pour these passions into my work in ways that will result in congregations responding to your call to get involved so that one day, no one will be without a home. 

Everyone needs a home.  Everyone.