Questions about home

In three days, I will be in the air, flying over the Pacific.  Considering that I was in Washington just 3 weeks ago, this year has held more back and forth for me than usual.  It's always so bittersweet to take this trip, regardless of which way I'm going, and typically the trip causes me to wonder just where home is for me. 

What has been revealed to me so clearly this year is that home is where God leads me.  This year has been tough in ways that other years have not been: knowing all year that one of my only other guy friends here would be leaving Japan at the end of the year, trying to get back into dating and questioning whether I'll find "the one" here, dealing with various frustrations in and out of the classroom...  In the face of challenges, loneliness and disappointment, my gut instinct was to ask "Is this really supposed to be home for me?"

Here's what God has shown me: if my definition of home depends on friends, if it depends on always feeling comfortable and successful, or depends on the possibility of finding my future wife, then I am way off-base in my priorities.  If those factors become the ultimate goal in my life, or in my mind the ultimate source of fulfillment, then I am not truly living a life of humble service and worship. 

Rather, home is where God leads me.  Even in the frustrating and challenging moments, home is where God leads me.  A colleague of mine who has been at CAJ for many years as the choir director often tells me that because our citizenship is in Heaven, we are enabled to live in a variety of places.  What a reassuring truth.  I have slowly been detaching myself from a mentality that defines the usefulness of a place by the potential from friendship, relationships and always feeling comfortable and realizing that I simply need to follow God, for where He leads, I find my true home.  This is incredibly freeing... with this in mind, I do not need to wonder or worry if I am where I'm supposed to be, or if I'm supposed to be somewhere else.  I simply need to trust that because God has lead me to a place, I can treat that place like home; put down roots, settle, engage, and simply BE where I am.  Rather than feel torn between places, or doubtful as to what home means, I should rejoice in the gift of several homes, and trust to follow when God calls me to follow and stay when God calls me to stay.