::you can't go home again... right?::

You can't step in the same river twice.

You can't go home again.

We've all tried to go back for something whether it was a relationship, a place, a memory, or an experience. We've tried to recapture that emotion; tried to bring something or someone back to life. I have done so only to realize that I couldn't recreate the conversation or hold onto the feelings. It wouldn't be the same.

But maybe I didn't learn my lesson because I did go home again. Sort of.  

I grew up in a residential recovery community called His Mansion Ministries. It's located on a 300+ acre working farm in New Hampshire and it's for men and women aged 18-35 who struggle with severe brokenness and life controlling behaviors and issues such as drugs, alcohol, certain mental health disorders, abuse, trauma, and pornography. My family lived and served there for nearly 11 years. I spent some of my most formative years at His Mansion. It was home. But... what is home?

A place where I had family, where I felt safety and familiarity, where I could be myself. Home meant community and a sacred space. I can't sum it up any better now than when I tried 4.5 years ago in this post.

This past March I did what I never imagined I'd do. I co-led the spring break missions trip from Wheaton College to His Mansion. I went as a volunteer to a place where I used to live, to a community that remains deeply familiar to me yet has changed. I'm wandering around the buildings and fields with memories haunting me at every step. I'm asking a million questions, wanting to know all the big and small changes since I was last there. I fall back easily into the rhythms of the community, doing things automatically and speaking the 'language' because they're still ingrained in me. I'm not surprised by the vulnerability and hospitality shown by the Residents and Servant Leaders because that's just how His Mansion is. My students are wide-eyed at the radicalness of the community whereas I'm sighing contentedly and knowing in the depths of my heart that "I'm home". 

This was my space. These were my people. I knew where I belonged. Now, it's no longer my home. I don't know the people anymore. I enter as an outsider instead of an insider. I once claimed this place as mine but it's no longer in my grasp. For someone who has a constant undercurrent of angst about the metaphorical-ness and the literal-ness of 'home', to have some sense of that just by setting foot on a snowy dirt road and seeing the dusky mountains in the distance almost knocked the wood smoke-scented air out of me. Home means something unique to each person. I could write all day and not capture it.

I'm writing this post from my current 'home': a western Chicagoland suburb of Illinois. His Mansion and that spring break trip feel like a world and a half away. What do I do now? How do I translate what I love from one community to another? Does a place ever stop being home? Is it a betrayal to make a new place home? How do I hold onto the memories of the past but not get caught up in them? As per usual, I have more questions than answers.

The people make the place

The place has stayed the same

But the people have changed

I have received many wounds and broken hearts

I have received much healing and goodness

Particularly when I'm feeling the uncomfortable things like pain, hurt, and loneliness, I want to go home. But I don't know where that is. Or I can't go back there anymore. So what can I do? Because the answer is yes, you can go home again and at the same time, no, you cannot. Wrestle with that as you will. It's a paradox I'm struggling to solve.