home is with your homies

I remember reading in my seventh grade World Civilizations class about people called nomads. They moved from place to place without ever having any real permanent settlement. This sounded like "the life" to me, always on the move, exploring new places, herding goats. Well, maybe not the goat part, but the concept sounded glamorous. That is, until I started living it.

I am in a phase in my life with very little permanence. I am already in my second city and second job since graduating college a little over two years ago. I have lived with a total of 15 people, 2 dogs, and 1 cat in the past 7 years. (No, not at the same time.) I've seriously considered moving to at least 5 different cities in the past two years. I have done the job search thing 3 times, and am preparing for the next round. This is not the glamour I imagined. This is a problem. I have no home.

And now, after spending a much-needed and therapeutic weekend in the same city as my three best friends, sisters would actually be a better word, I find myself seriously reassessing what it means to be home. All this time I have been looking for three things I thought made "HOME".
1) The perfect city - safe, cultured, educated, fun things to do, good places to eat, places to find shoes for less than $20, this is all I asked.
2) The perfect job - with a sense of real purpose, a feeling of appreciation for what I do, the opportunity to be creative and teach how I want, freedom from standardized testing, a salary above 40k (okay I might have been stretching it on the last two...)
3) The perfect house - affordable, cute, spacious, fenced yard for the dog, plenty of little fix-it projects for me

One of the problems with these things is that they all involve the idea of perfect, something all of us seek, but none of us find, because in the end we live in the world and because it is the world and because we are human, it is undeniably flawed. So I scratch the word "perfect" and I am still left with "city, job, house". Each of those things sound so cold and empty to me when they are isolated like that. That is because they are missing one very important thing: relationship. So now I've come to find that the things I've been seeking, the things I have used to define "HOME", are inadequate. Here are my new top three:
1) Family - a church home, parents who love you unconditionally, a dog that thinks plastic bottles are treasures and stays with you while you cry, friends that know you completely inside and out and stand by you
2) Dreams - working to change lives, fighting the odds, putting yourself on the line for the good of others, wanting the seemingly impossible, planning a Christmas tree farm/art studio/book writing/antiquing/teaching career
3) God - meeting daily through prayer, reading the Word, having compassion, seeking truth, living like Jesus, sacrificing, forgiving, loving, loving, loving

Now let's look at these three words - family, dreams, God. Much more inspiring. These are things to live for. These are things to seek. As I look toward my next steps in life, I will look for these three things, and wherever I find them, I know I will be home.