a note

I've been thinking a lot about home. About how you and I search these city streets for something we can hold on to. I don't know if you just arrived for the semester or if you've wandered these shops from the day you were born, but I do know you're on the lookout. Just waiting for something to come alive; waiting for your name to appear on the walls, on the cement you walk across, for it to say: I WAS HERE.

Searching from the beginning, I've crawled my way across countries. Standing toe to toe with strangers and studying their eyes for something that will allow me to set down my bags. I want to sit across from every person I've ever met and ask them where they put their grief. How does the color of their world change when hope no longer feels like a sweater too big? I want to know, for me, for you. We're in this together, see. Pain from one heart is a ripple that is felt throughout generations. Meaning: please be kind, but also, please be brave with your story. 

You say, "maybe if I felt more at home I could settle back more". I know the feeling. Thinking, if only I recognized these streets, could give directions, discover a favorite cafe and make it my own. Then, then, I'll be home. Yes, I'm convinced that helps. It's comforting to have routine and familiarity, but I'm not sure that it's home.

I think we don't even know what we're looking for, we just know what it'll feel like when we get there. Much like when I went back to Germany for a couple weeks and thought, this is it. Yet then I came back to the States and thought, yes, but this. I was right about both. We're constantly torn. We leave behind pieces of our heart across borders and states. We want to be everywhere, but where we are. We just want to find our place.

I read a quote once that changed my life. It said that no matter where we go, we take ourselves with us.

I think that maybe, we should draw up chairs for the entire world. We should look around us and find emotion in the faces of strangers. We should take their hands and ask them what they do when everything they know falls apart. Ask them what they do when they're in love. We should stare at the space we're in (house, love, relationship, career, parenthood, single-hood) and get to know its summer evenings and winter haze. Meaning, to familiarize yourself with the map of you.

You and I are always searching, but I think we can stop now.

I don't really have more to say (always, but yet). I think I just want to let you know that you can come home. You can look in the mirror and say, I belong here. You can read the Psalms and say, that's for me. You can look at all the people around you and say, my journey is their journey too. You can read their stories (whether on a page or simply spilled out in daily life around you) and say, me too, me too, me too.

I hope you'll find belonging on the very ground you stand on, because you were here. You did tell your story. You aren't alone.