For Wilshire Baptist Church
What is home? I mean, what is it really? We all know the saying, “home is where the heart is,” but then that begs the question, “where is the heart?”
A piece of my heart has always been in Great Falls, Montana, where I was born while my father was in the Air Force. LeAnn and I flew into that small city last week on our way to Yellowstone National Park. She’d never been there, and I had been there just once before — twice if you count the six months that I lived there after I was born.
Going back this time, we saw the abandoned hospital where I was born, the duplex I was brought home to, the city park, the little Baptist church that we attended, the park that I was taken to, and the waterfalls on the Missouri River made famous by explorers Lewis and Clark. But I sort of felt like the John Denver lyric, “going home to a place I’ve never been before.” At place after place, if I mentioned to a clerk or museum guide that I was born there, the response was rather ho hum.
Don’t get me wrong: Great Falls is a beautiful city and there’s so much to see and do there. But despite what it says on my birth certificate, there is nobody in Great Falls that connects me to that place; six months after I was born, my parents went home to their native Texas. The closest I got to a feeling of home was a wonderful waiter at a restaurant who could have been the twin brother of a man we know in Dallas. I had to ask him if he had a brother in Dallas, and of course he didn’t.
From Great Falls we drove to Yellowstone and all my thoughts of home went away as we soaked up the wonders and beauty of this planet Earth. But then something amazing happened: we had just arrived at the Old Faithful Geyser and walked into the lobby of of the Old Faithful Lodge, teeming with hundreds of people, when I suddenly saw a familiar face. I’m usually slow with names, but everything clicked and I blurted aloud, “Nelsons?” It was Cheryl and Jerry Nelson, former Wilshire members, longtime friends of LeAnn and now my friends too. They’d come from their home in San Diego and we from ours in Garland, and we spent the next several hours enjoying “home” with each other.
Sunday morning we watched the live stream of Wilshire’s worship service from a cabin near Grand Teton National Park. And there was our Wilshire Winds playing the prelude and a sanctuary full of people we love, and for a blessed hour we were at home.
Later that day we walked into a historic general store and struck up a conversation with the couple who were docents. We learned they were enjoying a summertime job there but they live on Lake Tawakoni, attend church in Rockwall, and he had just retired from the same organization as my father. Visiting with them felt like home.
Off and on as cell and WiFi signals allowed, we checked in on parents and friends and it was like being home with them though 1,200 miles apart. We planned connections with the Nelsons two more times and shared photos and stories with mutual friends back in Texas.
Sunday evening we stood on a patio overlooking the vast valley at the base of the Tetons with hundreds of strangers who were there to watch for elk and whatever other wildlife might come into view as the sun set. Indeed, we saw some elk in the distance and shared our find with a woman who shared it with her elderly father. We were all there at home in God’s magnificent creation.
On the way back to our cabin in the dark, with unreliable GPS service and a poor paper map, we struggled to discern which road we were on and which road we needed to be on. My frustration grew with every mile to nowhere, but all was OK because I never feel lost and always feel at home with LeAnn. Later, when we finally reached the cabin, we stood outside in the darkness and looked heavenward. We saw the stars as we hadn’t seen them in decades, and we both recalled stargazing at home with our fathers when we were children.
And now we are back in our familiar physical home, but we were never really away from home because home is not just a place on a map. Home is the people who share our lives and help us feel complete no matter where we are.