“Have Home, Will Travel”
I’m building this retirement plane while I’m flying it.
What’s next? Two weeks ago, Heart of the Rockies Christian Church formally called its next Senior Pastor. My interim ministry ends with worship and a farewell reception on Sunday, June 8, after which Jennie and I will commence the 1,233-mile drive home.
I’ve been thinking about home since the beginning of the year. On January 5, we celebrated Epiphany Sunday and the arrival of the star-led Magi by picking “star words” for the new year. We came forward for communion, received the bread and cup, then veered over to where a member of the congregation stood with a basket of three-inch wooden stars, each painted yellow with a word on it. My star word, written in blue sharpie, is home.
I returned to my seat starstruck. Home, huh? Where, pray tell, is home?
Is 3085 Montavesta Road, Lexington, KY, home? You wouldn’t know it. For the first thirty-three months of retirement, Jennie and have been away from that address for eighteen months. We no sooner got back there after eleven months in Columbia, MO, than we were asked if we’d consider Fort Collins, CO. Now, even before we’ve left Fort Collins, we’re being asked, “Where next?”
Jennie is from Virginia. I’m from Ohio. We met in Nashville. We’ve lived and served churches in Tennessee, Missouri, North Carolina, Indiana, Arizona, Kentucky, and Colorado. Each was home for a season of our lives, but none permanently. I can’t hold a job. I can’t hold retirement either. Our kids grew up (Lord’s) Army brats and have scattered to the four winds. Jennie and I are empty nesters who have flown the coop ourselves. Where’s home?
I have no answer, but I’ve been praying the question while contemplating the yellow star with the word home on it that sits on a table next to the chair I adopted as mine in the kitchen of the townhouse that is home to us for two more weeks.
Aphorisms featuring the word home come to mind:
Home is where the heart is.
Make yourself at home.
Home, sweet home.
There’s no place like home.
In all the places I’ve lived, all eight states, I could speak the above maxims with sincerity (Okay, okay – in some places I felt more at home than others). But truthfully, in all the locales I’ve lived, learned, and ministered, I was able to call that place home. I came to enjoy each place’s quirks and perks, relish its topography, cheer for its sports teams, delve into its history, acquire a taste for its cuisine and drink, learn its peculiar speech patterns and vocabulary, and adjust to its time zone, weather, and humidity (or lack thereof). All the places I’ve lived became home. Until they weren’t – I was on my way to a new home.
Two weeks ago, it dawned on me that through all my life’s moves, there have been three constants, three things present everywhere I’ve lived that made that place home: a church family, friends, and family. Give me those three anywhere and I’m home.
Jennie and I have been embraced by the Heart of the Rockies church family. We’ve been visited in Colorado by our family – all three kids, their spouses, and our three grandchildren. We’ve made dozens of new friends, been visited by old friends from our homes in Indiana and Kentucky, and been in communication with friends and family from the other places we’ve called home. Add it all up and the letters of Fort Collins can be rearranged to spell home. Voila!
Before both of us retired three years ago within a month of each other, my long-time spiritual director, Amanda, said to me, “David, you have lived your life going where invited. I encourage you to ask in your prayer time each morning, “What is the invitation today?” Good counsel, huh? Oh, the Places You'll Go! is Dr. Seuss’ book. By going where invited, it’s my life’s story.
Based on my contemplation of my star word, I sense Jennie and my home in retirement for the foreseeable future is not going to be a permanent place, but a moveable feast, a delectable journey to be discerned, embarked upon, and enjoyed one season at a time at God’s invitation and leading.
After I mentioned my pondering where home is at our Bethany Fellows Leadership Retreat back in February in Arizona (one of my past homes of church family, family, and friends), my friend Kim Gage Ryan sent a link to a deep cut from Billy Joel’s 1973 Piano Man album titled “You’re My Home.” Its lyrics sing the truth that home is not where a house is, but wherever we are living in the precious presence of the loves of our lives – for me: the Triune God, a congregation of people of vibrant faith, Jennie, family, and friends.
When you look into my eyes
And you see the crazy gypsy in my soul
It always comes as a surprise
When I feel my withered roots begin to growWell, I never had a place that I could call my very own
But that's all right, my love, 'cause you're my homeHome can be the Pennsylvania Turnpike
Indiana's early morning dew
High up in the hills of California
Home is just another word for youI'll never be a stranger and I'll never be alone
Wherever we're together, that's my homeIf I travel all my life
And I never get to stop and settle down
Long as I have you by my side
there's a roof above and good walls all aroundYou're my castle, you're my cabin, and my instant pleasure dome
I need you in my house 'cause you're my home.
When Jennie and I were married, anticipating the moveable feast we sensed was before us in a lifetime of shared ministry following God’s call, we chose to have Matthew 6:33 read at the wedding: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
What’s next? We’ll go where invited. We’ll find a vibrant church to be part of. (My buddy Geoff Mitchell, a pastor after my own heart, says he “wants to use his days that are left to strengthen our churches for the future. We need more open, passionate, Jesus-centered churches.” Count me in.) We’ll stay in touch with longtime friends and make new ones. We’ll begin each day asking, “What is the invitation today?”
Life’s a moveable feast whose Host meets us at table on Sunday wherever we are, then meets us throughout the week, throughout the years, throughout our lives, wherever we go.
Have home, will travel.
