The Place we call Home

This morning, we shared meaningfully about our experiences in the past week – successes and moments of challenge. We discussed how slowing ourselves down, sometimes through our breath, to gain a few moments to collect our thoughts, can be a helpful way to deal with conversations or actions that leave us uncomfortable. We know that this is a lifetime work and it is not something to master overnight, but will be played out over time as we gain experience and wisdom.

The fundamental part is to return home to ourselves. What does that mean? We have to return to a place of warmth, safety, security, and calmness, which lies within us. It is the place where our conscience rests; a place we cannot betray. The problem is that we do not spend much time with ourselves because we will encounter our hurt, our pain, and our suffering. We flee from ourselves when we ought to consider befriending ourselves. We can discover that we like ourselves and want to spend more time with ourselves. We can be a gentle, compassionate parent to those areas that are wounded and we can enjoy the part of us that we really admire.

For many of us, we flee from our unlovableness, our lack of measuring up, our past failures and poor choices, our thoughts that we are not attractive enough, smart enough, kind enough, athletic enough. We might be excessively overweight, too short, have an awkward blemish or skin condition, a disability. We might be an orphan, from a divorced family, the cause of the family friction, the black sheep; we might question our orientation or gender, be unhappy because we are in the wrong field, we are broken from the words of parents or a romantic relationship, or bad luck seems to come our way. The list is exhaustive.

When we return home to ourselves, we deal with our lovable side. We sit before God and let God warmly gaze upon us and be filled with pride and admiration. It is as if God is infatuated to be with us, and we find God wants to spend more time with us – just marveling at what God created. It is the place to which we can always return – a place within ourselves that is home.