To be Known

I just re-read my post from August 26 titled 'Home' and I vividly remember typing those words from a Memphis hotel room on the night we left SC, bound for Vancouver for the first time.  That was a hard day full of emotions and I now sit in our little apartment reflecting again about the word 'home'.  You see we've done it again - not in the Britney Spears oops sort of way - but in a planned, intentional sort of way - we've left (after a full and wonderful visit).  And it's different this time - we left our old home to come home to a place that it now familiar and dotted with memories - even after only being here four months.  What a difference four months can make!  Don't get me wrong - tears still welled in my eyes as I hugged my parents goodbye and I chose not to speak in the interest of preserving my eye makeup; heartstrings were plucked watching our children rekindle friendships that hadn't been tended daily.  And I realized that when I wrote on that day in August from an impersonal hotel room that the tears and the sense of grief grew not only from leaving one physical home for another, but also from the longing to connect our two contexts to each other.  We had a lovely time seeing friends and family in SC, NC & GA, and seeing our children jump back into friendships without missing a beat over the holidays.  However,  there was no way to adequately incorporate all that we've experienced since our move to Canada into conversation or explanation.  While that's completely OK I wanted to be able to share with family and friends how much they'd enjoy knowing our new friends.  I wanted to take them to the mall where I walk to buy groceries and I wanted them to be able to see the store we're referring to when we talk about the 'corner store'.  And this - this disconnect of places that are home to me and my family - this is the source of grief.  But it's also the source of great joy.

In the next week we're finalizing a target date for my parents to visit and I couldn't be more thrilled.  I want them to come here so we can share with them our walk to school, the views from our windows and our new friends.  Their visit will provide for us the first piece of connective tissue between the life we left in SC and the life we're building here in Canada, and that connection means more to me than words can express.  After all - connection is a basic, primal privilege of being human.  It's in our connectedness to people and places that we understand our own meaning and identity and that sense of being 'known' is truly a spark of the Divine. 

It was my longing to be known that conjured tears when we left back in August - grieving the farewell to folks we'd interacted with day in and day out and wondering how long it would take to encounter new day to day folks.  Today, with as sense of relief, I can report with confidence that good, kind, wonderful people have come into our lives.  Our fabric of connection has grown stronger and has been a blanket of comfort as we endeavor to live authentically in our new reality.  Again we are known - our identities affirmed by our connectedness to other people, cultures and places.  And I look forward to sharing all that our lives have become with people who are dear to me outside of this place.
 
Our family is entering 2014 intentionally grateful - for places like Clemson, Athens, Montreat, Atlanta and Vancouver that feel like home.  More importantly we're grateful for people who are home to us - from all over the world.  And we're grateful for those who help us connect the dots between and among our life experiences.  We also hold close to our hearts people for whom home may not be a safe place.  My hope is that we all may know the contentment that comes from being known and accepted - warts and all.  For this is how I have experienced 'home' and will endeavor to live it wherever life may take us and share it with whoever we may encounter along the way.   And our family has chosen to respond with gratitude - for even in the midst of the grief and sadness that come with change, there are glimmers that sparkle in us an abiding sense of hope and when we focus on what/for whom/where we're grateful, life just seems a little bit better.  In gratitude perspective and grace and sometimes even inspiration.  There's not a single resolution I made this year - I've instead re-awakened to a call to live intentionally with a heightened awareness of how I'm connected to the world around me and how I can celebrate that.  It doesn't take the turn of a calendar page to make this happen - instead, it takes an attitude shift on my part - to choose where I put my focus.  And I choose to focus on life and its good gifts and try to be an agent of home for all I may encounter.  Pollyanna?  Maybe.  Lifegiving?  Absolutely.  Happy New Year from our home to yours.