The first time I left home, it was for college. It was only about a fifty minute drive, but it seemed pretty far. The next time I left home, it was about six months before our wedding, and I was moving into an apartment in a small town about fifteen minutes away from my parents’ home. The time after that, I left home to move across the country so my new husband could attend a college in California, and the time after that, it was to move back across the country to Ohio to welcome our first baby (and grandchild) into the family within a couple of months. The last time I left home was three and a half years ago when we made the trek back across the US to California from Ohio again.
This idea of “home-leaving” is one that we can use to think about any time we move from a place (or mindset) with clear or comfortable assumptions to a place of unknown. For all of us, the new restrictions placed on us by the pandemic were a type of home-leaving, and it’s clear that for the near future, we can’t return to the ways of moving in the world that were typical and comfortable. Our human nature wants to resist change; we want everything to remain the same. But that’s not the nature of our world. We see it in nature and in the seasons, from the exuberance of new life in the spring to the quiet retreat of fall. Leaving home means accepting the uncertainty of life, whether we are faced with a cross-country move or a pandemic. How do we navigate what we don’t know?
I wish I had a good answer, but my experience of home-leaving has only shown me that when we step out into the unknown path, the light we have shines on the first step, not the ten steps beyond. So we take that, and then the next step is illuminated. One of my favorite contemporary authors, Glennon Doyle, says, “Just do the next right thing one thing at a time. That'll take you all the way home.”
Maybe you’ve lived in the same place, area, or state for most of your life, but this pandemic has rocked your world. It has rocked mine even though I’ve left home a number of times. Think of it this way: Each time we do the next right thing, we are moving toward home. This home may be a new and different home: a place of rest where we recognize we are not in control and never have been.
Photo courtesy of Kuhlens Photography