"Where's Home for You Anyways?"

Last night, as I was running my checkout with my  manager, he asked me, "So, where's home for you anyways?"

I said, "Here."

But I didn't mean it. On the drive home, I thought about his question, and I think my answer isn't "here," but more along the lines of, "What is home anyways?"

I wrote sometime during college that I felt like a nomad, and it's still true. My point of reference and the place where I will always think of as home is in the house where I'm writing this. Not Tulsa, necessarily, but in this home. I will always have a secret pleasure in driving up the hills and through the fields and past the big blue wall to get to my wonderful, wonderful home and family.

And my body is here right now, but this still isn't home.

My heart is in Arkansas.

I went to college there, a few of the people I love best are there, my church is there, my academic self found an outlet there. But it was my college home, and college ended for me. So it's not my home anymore.

Then I'm moving to Ireland, and it will be lovely and adventuresome and everything good and wonderful. But again, it will only be a year. Not my home either.

Then to Denver for another degree. Still not home.

So, folks, am I meant to redefine? Or am I meant to continually wander with my heart in five different places at once?

"Where's home for you anyways?"

My heart is playing in the pool outside in my backyard and in the mountains with Haley and in Stillwater with Caity and in Houston with Kira and in Siloam with Noah and Abby and Becca and Maddie and JBU and First Pres and in Belfast with Queens. That's where.