Home

As I sit at the airport in Romania and wait to board a plane to America, I find myself thinking a lot about the word home.  I'm going home! But I'm also leaving my home.

So what is home?

1. A safe place to be yourself.

Home is the place where you don't have to pretend. You are free to be happy, sad, frustrated, confused or sometimes just silly.

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." - Maya Angelou

2. A place where something flourishes.

I love this Oxford Dictionary definition. Home is a place where you grow and change. A place where you are encouraged to be your best self. A place where you flourish into something beautiful.

3. A place filled with memories.

Home is a place where time is invested and personal memories are made. I can love my visiting my sister,  or love the mountains but those places are not my home because I have never invested serious time there.

4. A place shared with loved ones.

This is the most important element of a true home. It is loved ones who make you feel safe, accept you for who you are and help you to flourish. It is with people that memories are made. It is the people our hearts are drawn to, and without people and without love a place ceases to be a home.

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As I reflect on these definitions I am grateful for the homes God has given me over the years. Some were home only for a season while others remain. But having so many homes also leaves me feeling that I am never completely at home. Romania is home but it is not my culture which leaves me longing. Iowa is home but it is not my calling which also leaves me longing.

The reality is our earthly "home" will never be as complete as we want it to be. Things change, people move, our hearts are torn between different places. But God didn't design us for an earthly home. We were designed to make our home in God's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. Only there, only in Him can we be completely safe, completely ourselves. Only in Him can we flourish to our full potential. The best memories we can make are by following Him and His plan because He loves us more than anyone else.

Choosing Abundant Life - Every Day

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” 

–Jesus in John 10:10

Every day we make hundreds to thousands of choices from what to wear, what to eat, how to spend money or who to spend time with. As a missionary I have a lot of freedom to make my own choices which is in many ways nice, but also a big responsibility. In order to live life to the full, to live the abundant life, I need to make certain choices. But making these choices is not a “one and done” thing; I must make conscious choices every day.

• Choose GOD. Choose to make Him a priority. In a world constantly telling us what we need to be satisfied, the Bible is absolutely clear that Jesus and God are the source of true life. Without God we can do nothing.
• Choose your PERSPECTIVE. We may not be able to choose our circumstances but we can always choose our perspective in the midst of everyday life, including the hard times. We can choose to be thankful. We can choose to show love. We can choose joy. We can choose to let go of worries and experience peace.
• Choose to be INTENTIONAL and take RISKS. For me, it is easy to settle into monotonous routine, even if it leads to loneliness, boredom and ultimately frustration. But living abundantly means getting out of our comfort zones to be intentional with our time and relationships, to take risks and try new things, even if we don’t know how they will turn out.
• Choose to live in COMMUNITY. The abundant life is not lived alone. We must choose to invest in community, in relationships. We must choose to be vulnerable in order to go deeper and ultimately be stronger together.
• Choose to do MORE of the things that FILL YOU UP. We must choose to do more of the things that fill us up, bring us joy and make us feel alive. More of the things that make us forget to check our phones. For me this is spending time having fun with friends or with kids, creative lettering or enjoying the quiet of nature. These things are unique for each one of us so it’s often up to us as individuals to make this happen!
• Choose GRACE. As hard as we might try, each day is going to hold choices we wish we could take back. We are imperfect, broken people but every day we can choose to remember the grace of God. We can remember that we are saved because of His love, not because of what we’ve done.

Again, there are days where I don’t make the right choices and I don’t live life as full as I could. But tomorrow is a new day full of new possibilities and new choices. What choices might you need to make to live life more abundantly?