Have you ever felt like you simply do not fit anywhere?
Have you ever felt deeply, painfully homesick, longing for a place that seems like it might not exist? Have you ever realized that even when you are right where home is supposed to be, it doesn’t fill the longing?
As a missionary kid (MK) and third culture kid (TCK), I have a unique experience with this longing for home. At a younger age, my house in Colombia, South America, felt like where I fit and where I was supposed to be. However, it wasn’t home.
Furloughs were the highlights of my childhood, the most exciting thing in my world. We would count down the nights until our flight and start packing days ahead of time, all the while practically bouncing off the walls at the prospect of going to the US. Every aspect of it was thrilling: the rare event of getting up before the sun and driving through the big city to the airport, the flight itself, and everything we would get to do in our “home country.”
To my childhood self, the special things we did were by far the most important part of furlough. During the few weeks or months we were in the States, we got to eat all the things that weren’t available in South America (going to Chick-fil-A was an incredibly exciting event, and French toast sticks and Goldfish were very special treats) and get the new clothes we needed. Yet even more exciting was getting to see family.
Visiting our relatives, especially our grandparents and great grandparents, was one of the main reasons for our furloughs. We desperately missed them and looked forward to our time together with thrilling anticipation. Our visits created special memories: the unique scents of my grandparents’ homes, the sounds of their voices, our traditions and the food we would eat there. Even more than the house in Colombia that belonged to us, this was home.
These memories are very precious to me, even though, as I got older, they faded out of reach. Growing up is never easy. For me, it came with the loss of very specific, sought-after experiences, with a deep feeling of not belonging anywhere, and with a sudden realization that my dozens of imaginary friends and books weren’t enough to alleviate my loneliness in my host country. It also came with finding out that not everything in my extended family was as happy and as perfect as it looked, a knowledge that stained our precious moments together. It came with watching funerals live online, and knowing there were some voices and embraces, and some deep feelings of home, happiness, and safety, that I would never experience again.
As a child, my homesickness could be relieved through furloughs, but this very quickly changed. Or perhaps I should say that I changed; my circumstances didn’t, but my perception did.
Nowhere is perfect. No one can fulfill all our longings.
Today, there are parts of my heart scattered across the world. I feel so much more at home in my host country, where I have a church family, neighbors, friends, a culture I love, and a language that I can’t even leave out of English conversations. But in the US, I have family.
For a long while, I struggled to find what I was longing for and fought to erase the homesickness. The excitement and anticipation of traveling slowly faded as each move came with more loss instead of fulfillment.
I am now aware that there is no place on this earth that can satisfy this longing, nowhere that will erase the feeling of being a stranger and homeless wanderer.
But that certainly does not mean that such a place does not exist. To quote C.S. Lewis,
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures can satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.
This search for a perfect home—this deep homesickness that nothing can fill—means that we are longing for the real thing. Home, safe and eternal and deeply joyful, does exist.
I believe that all followers of Jesus should feel this. Even if you have lived in the same place your whole life, you were not made for this world, and you should not feel satisfied by it. There is something more, something eternal, something that will fill you completely.
Christians sometimes feel like outsiders. We should. We are strangers in a strange land, wanderers with a different citizenship. Our kingdom is in heaven with Jesus.
Every time we feel homesick, it reflects how we should long for heaven. Like the little MK who can’t wait to go “home,” we should look forward to heaven with excitement and anticipation. But unlike any earthly home, heaven will satisfy every feeling of longing and completely banish all homesickness. The momentary joy and excitement we experience here on earth is only a shadow of what we will feel when we really do go home for all eternity.
I have come to realize that I will always experience longing and homesickness in this life, and despite being painful, these desires are not entirely bad. They remind me that I am not of this world, and they keep me looking to the end of my race with anticipation and excitement to discover what it is like to be somewhere where I completely belong.
This homesickness, this longing for something more, is a reminder that the best is yet to come.
