Visiting Home

 Well, the new year is well on its way, and I find myself packing bags because I'm traveling to Panama tomorrow.  It has been a trip intensely prepared since it is mostly a work-related trip.  I'm accompanying a student who is going to spend 2.5 months in my hometown for an immersion experience and I'm traveling with her to get her settled.  The plan is that I will stay in Panama for a week to help her navigate a bit.  Panama is not an easy country to visit on your own.  You have to go with someone who knows how things work there.  That's why I have never really pushed hard to establish any sort of study abroad situation in my country of birth.  But this student is the daughter of our friend and that just makes everything more ... complicated.

At any rate, I have been stressing out about this trip since August.  I think I have all the details I could anticipate, taken care of.  Until they canceled my Airbnb reservation and I was left without a place to stay...

The thing is, the area where my hometown is located is having a huge festival happening around the days I will be there.  It is the first year they have been able to do this festival since Covid, so people are really excited and since it is "summer" over there, half the country is traveling to my hometown and surrounding areas for the entire week! Therefore, there is no room at any inn...Hotels were booked since October so I had to resort to alternative sites like VRBO and Airbnb...I found one house...but, in Panama...things are never smooth, so the owner decided he had to cancel my reservation days before my trip.  Needless to say, it was panic time.  But I'm happy to announce that after playing a bit with the dates, I was able to get a place for my sister and I to stay.

The worst part of this last-minute-agitation, however, has been the reminder that I don't have a place of my own in the town I've always considered ... home ...

I'm just a visitor who needs to book a hotel every time I go.  So, I'm not "coming home."  I'm just "visiting" the place that once was home...and that is a very hard and sad realization to accept...

Sigh...

I think of my sons, growing up in this house, having their own bedrooms.  I think of Grant who even though he leaves in the dorms for the semester, he knows he can always come "home" and his room will be waiting for him right the same way it was when he left it, regardless of when that was.  I think of Dylan and his huge mess, and how he decided that what he wanted for Christmas was a "room-make-over" because he wants to give it his personal touch rather than keeping the stuff we had put in there for him.  I know that it hasn't occurred to them that one day they might not be able to "come home" because "home" is no more.  I know that, because that's how I felt up until about 12 years ago...but things do change.  Parents pass away.  Siblings' disagreements turn ugly. People get hurt. Sisters are locked out...only able to drive by the house they grew up in and look at it from the other side of the fence...memories fade.

The good news is, home is not a house.  Home is where the people we love are, even if it is a cardboard box.  And the best news of all is, we have a mansion waiting for us in Heaven. (John 14: 2)  We have a place specially prepared for us at our permanent residence which nobody could ever take away from us. We would never have to wonder if it has been converted into someone's studio.  We would never have to stare at it from afar.  We've never be locked out. We have been told by Jesus Himself that He, Himself is preparing it for us...and that's all we need to know.  No worries or stress or anxiety...just infinite gratitude and peace.

So, as I entrust this trip to His Hands, I pray that the thought of us having an eternal home prepared for us by the One Whose Spirit resides in us, will fill us up with hope, peace and love in this new year.  Blessed be the Precious Name of Jesus.  Amen!