Home

Tonight I was walking back from a friend's dorm to Ferrin, my dorm. As I looked up at the big building, I smiled and thought "I haven't been home much today." Home. I now refer to my dorm room at Gordon College as home. And it has become my home: the place I run to when I am stressed, where I can curl up with a good book and a mug of cocoa, where I can run and dance and be insane, where I sleep each night and can get hugs from my roommate. I feel comfort, secure in my room, I recognize the now-familiar wardrobes and desks.

Webster's Dictionary defines home as "one's place of residence". I don't agree completely with that-- that can be a house. I prefer their 3rd definition of the word better, however; "a familiar or usual setting". But that still doesn't encompass the simple word that is "home". The best way I could define home is imagine you are lost in Australia and have one free ticket back to where ever you want to go, but you have to stay there once you are there. Where would you go? Probably not the best analogy, but I think it gets my point across.

At the beginning of the year, right after moving in to Ferrin, I felt homesick. I wanted nothing more than to go somewhere familiar with familiar faces. I missed the sights, smells and sounds I was so used to. Not having my family around me all the time was bizzare. The 1st night at Gordon (post La Vida, in my actual dorm), my mom texted me "sleep well in your new home". But it wasn't home, not yet.

I've been asked what I think heaven is going to look like. I have no idea, but I know it's going to be far far better than anything I could come up with. But I believe that it is going to have that feeling of going home after a long vacation: the vacation itself was fun and interesting, but you are so ready for that familiar bed, your favorite mug or book you didn't pack, to see your best friend again, the chair that has your imprint from you curling up on it so often. Heaven will be home.

Gordon has become a bit of home for me. The faces that are becoming familiar so quickly, the my 3rd dresser drawer that is slightly tilted and so doesn't close all the way, the pub/cafe on campus my roommate Angela and I study in before our Old Testament tests.

Sorry this is random and scattered... I have so much more I could write about with home, but I feel this might be long enough.