Home

I stood on the platform of the Praha Hlavni Nadrazi (Prague Main Train Station), once a bastion of Art Nouveaux architecture and now reduced to a dilapidated iron cave, waving goodbye like a good Czech to Lena until her train had passed way beyond my vision. Lena was on her way “home” to Cheb… a Czech home away from home, at least until two months from now when she loads all her things back in suitcases and carries them back to the USA.

Left alone on platform 2, I sat down on a nearby bench and relished the transient peacefulness of a silent train station, a place usually filled with the hustle and bustle of European travel: arrival and departure announcements, screeching trains coming to a halt, and busy people like ants wandering determinedly toward unknown destinations - people leaving home, people going home, people being welcomed back home, people arriving at a new home. The awkward absence of this emotion from such a romanticized place made it seem very plain and ordinary.

Sitting there now alone, I thought of Lena on her way back to Cheb and it made me think about home, about the definition of the word. I have certainly changed my definition of “home” greatly over the past two years and learned that “home” doesn’t define someone as much as we think it does. I remember back in college when the first question anyone asked you was, “Where are you from?” The answer was used to sort you into categories with automatic regional stereotypes: South, North, West, East, abroad, or Texas J Home helped label who you were at that point, and often people from the same region found comfort and camaraderie together.

But where was Lena really going? Home? Is that what she would call it?

If so, then I had left my home in Texas for a temporary home in Sokolov last year. When I decided to return to the Czech Republic, my “home” in Texas became temporary since I had only gone back for a visit. But, back in the Czech Republic, I left my “home” in Sokolov for an even more temporary “home” in Prague. Confused? Yeah, I was, too.

When I came to Prague, every part of me thought, “I’ll go back to Sokolov when I’m done here. No need to say goodbye to anyone or anything. This is my home, and I will be back.” That being the case, I never embraced Prague as my “home” in any sense of the word. If Sokolov wasn’t my real home, then certainly Prague was even less like home. Therefore, I didn’t really involve myself in people’s lives here, in ministry opportunities, or in a church. I distanced myself from everything with the thought that it didn’t make any sense to start something I couldn’t finish.

But, a month became two, and two months became three…. So, here I am three months later realizing that I can’t go back to Sokolov now, that it’s not my “home” anymore. The people I went there to serve have been served in other ways, I haven’t been a part my friends’ lives that I went back to be with, the things I wanted to do are too late to accomplish, and that’s not where I’m needed anymore. The ministry there in Sokolov would be better served if I stayed in Prague.

In that shocking realization, I looked around my “home” in Prague. I was living in a flat with four amazing girls that I had never opened up to or let into my life, I was surrounded by excellent worship and ministry opportunities that I never got involved in, suitcases that I never unpacked, people I never really served. I was horrified. What was I to do? I had put so much faith in the fact that I would definitely return to Sokolov, to the place and people that blessed me so much last year, where I felt comfortable, to finish my agenda there. But what I recognized instead was that I had passed up opportunities for friendship, ministry, and growth here in Prague because it was only “temporary”.

What I have learned this year after constantly moving from place to place, house to house, job to job, friend to friend, without anything to call my own, is that every “home” here on Earth is temporary and that we must always strive to reach our true Home by serving wherever we are to our fullest ability. If we limit our definition of “home” to exclude anything seemingly temporary, then we will never let ourselves be vulnerable or involved for the constant fear that it would suddenly end! What a sad way to live my life!
My home is where I am right now. Not that I don’t have roots or that I haven’t been affected by each individual place I’ve lived. Each “home” in my past makes me act differently, brings up different memories, both happy and sad, and has shaped me into the person I am now. But, by Living (with a capital L) wherever I am in the present, how much more of a difference can I make, how many more people can I touch, and how many more people can touch me? Just because something may seem “temporary” doesn’t mean that God can’t use it to teach me and others. Like waving to Lena until she was beyond my vision - just because I couldn’t see her anymore didn’t make her any less real or her caring friendship any less present in my life.

In many ways, I feel like I have already accomplished what God sent me here to accomplish - coming to Prague to teach for Katie at Nad Aleji. Smiling with colleagues at the faculty photo today to an audience of intrigued and giggling students, I realized that this was where my “home” was all along. As I accept that I won’t be returning to my former Czech “home” in Sokolov and face the reality of returning to my “home” in Texas in a few months, I’ve been considering how I want to spend my remaining time left in Prague… Rather than counting down the days until I have to leave, frantically packing in everything I’ve wanted to do these past years and never did, I would rather kick up my feet and make myself feel at “home”.