Coming Home

For the last three weeks, I have been looking for language. I have read poems and listened to the voices of those I admire and trust, and sometimes just sat in silence for long stretches of the afternoon. I have begun to write in ways I hope will capture and describe what the human condition feels like during a pandemic, but my words run out far before I get close enough to the center of the wound. 

I’m keeping up with laundry and Clorox. I’m reading Acts and Wendell Barry and old journals to see what requests I have been praying about for the last eight years. I’ve breaded chicken and boiled noodles, submitted my taxes, completed a puzzle, put beads on a string, written a song, cleaned out my desk drawer, and figured out how to stop using so many paper towels. I’ve spent hours sitting by my open window listening to nature — rain and mourning doves and blue jays — and I have thanked God repeatedly for the cardinals that have been flirting with each other against the backdrop of pink tree blossoms because that red on pink has saved my life against all this antiseptic grey. 

But this amounts to it. A list of “things” I have and have not been doing. What I eat, what I wear, who I reach out to, who reaches out to me. When I so deeply want to plumb all the way to the core of the epicenter, I am finding myself flinging crumbs of dirt all over and stopping, exhausted, with muddy knees, before I really get anywhere. Where, I have asked, is the depth in all of this? How can I organize gargantuan heartbreak and disruption into poetry and prose? I am ill-equipped for this. 

What I know is that it cannot be done seamlessly or by one person or thought process, because a pandemic crosses all divides, culturally, economically, spiritually, racially, generationally — all of it. My hurt and confusion and new processes are not yours. But I want to convey what this is doing to me. I want to say something that might help you uncover your unprecedented uncertainty. 

Every morning, I swallow a handful of pills: unpredictability, thankfulness, sorrow, hope, and discomfort. And I feel each symptom come upon my heart through the afternoon. Nothing about these days is steady. Some moments I am encouraged, like when I had the realization that this unknown virus is not new to Jesus. Some moments feel very intense and I just weep and focus on breathing. And some moments, when it is all too much, there is a struggle to get out of bed and put my hand to the work-from-home plow. Over all of it is an exhalation of grace, but this leads to not having the language. 

To say, I don’t have to have this figured out, means a lack of focus in word, deed, and thought. And at this point in the process, I am craving focus. If not over my emotion, at least over the language I use to describe, wrestle, and cradle it. 

So, here is one observation, among the many disordered epiphanies: I miss coming home. For the last three weeks, I have not left my house except for two trips for groceries and one hour-long drive. The uninterrupted hours I have spent here are a summation larger than usual, even for an introverted homebody like me. In my usual rhythm, I spend quite a lot of time at home because I find it absolutely rejuvenating and restorative. I am a person who, when they arrive home after work, does not like having to go back out for something. 

But in this new normal, being home all of the time has negated the comfort, the practice, and the restorative moment of harboring after a long, or stressful day “out there.” Coming home is an act of peace. It is a privilege for those who have lived a life of hard work and humility, and who have done the internal and external construction of building a shelter. I am fully aware that home is not a refuge or peaceful or safe place for everyone, and I am beyond thankful that my experience with arriving home is one that ignites comfort. I cannot speak to anyone else’s scenario and have it feel truthful or pungent, so I am only speaking to my experience here. 

What I am realizing more and more everyday that I am not able to return home, is how much I miss this blessing. Of arriving to a place you know you belong. Of taking off whatever suit or mask you carried while outside the private sphere. Of getting to cease from what feels difficult, or tense, or forced, or disappointing. Of entering rest. Of comfort, and nourishment, and soft furniture, and clean water, and silence. 

These days I am consumed by all of this all of the time. And before this sounds pretentious and tone-deaf when there are thousands currently deprived of basic health and quality of life, I am abundantly thankful that this is my scenario. The only point I am trying to convey is that coming home is a privilege and one that I miss. I am working extra hard and paying extremely close attention to recognizing the miracle of peace and completion, because I think I have been missing it. 

There is something here in this notion about the Kingdom of God, and I have been circling around it for days. Something about the final and true homecoming. Something that does not involve swapping high heels for slippers upon crossing the threshold. It is something about trading the pandemic in our lungs for an eternity of hallelujahs. 

One of my favorite quotes about home is by the poet John Sibley Williams, who says, “If home is an invented place, why does it hurt so much to leave?” That is exactly it. My construct of home is a place I ache for and love to return to. And I am longing for the day I will again be able to leave and return and be refreshed. 

What I now know, too, is how much I am longing for the Kingdom of God. How coming home in these days can be to my maker, not only to a human construct. Is there a greater threshold than the heart?