Strangers Looking for a Home

Ah, the highs and lows of cultural integration.

I went to watch Josephine's end of the year production tonight at her school for french learning as a second language. It's very different from the school she attends to learn math and science...It's truly a school of children from all over the world.

Tonight the program was a mix of the chorus and musical department singing songs about refugees and strangers living in a foreign land, and they invited the students from Josephine's class to read their stories and poems in between the songs.

I honestly didn't expect it. Halfway through the second song, tears were dripping off my cheek, quietly, as I tried to compose myself before anyone noticed.

The girl was singing in French about how she would never forget the land of her family, as the Moroccan rhythm accompanied the frenzied chorus. And I felt it. I was a stranger. Like all of these smiling children on the stage, we are lumped together in this country and we are alone, together.

If I find myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation, is that I was made for another world. C.S. Lewis

Ah, good old Lewis. I love the way he categorizes the deep longing of human emotion and logically points it all back to Christ.

I love home. I want home. But to be honest, I have never found home here on earth.

I was born in Germany, but lived there just long enough to get a passport. I grew as a curious, idealistic child in Utah, but left before formative adolescence kicked in. I stayed for years in Southern California and left right after the birth of my firstborn. I spent ten years on the foggy coasts of Northern Oregon and was disciplined and discipled in the ways of Jesus. But I have never found "home."

Now, I've been living in this adopted country for a year. It has been open and welcoming and wonderful to me and my family. Still, I was falling apart at a french rendition of a country western song, and stifling sobs as I watched the students line dance across the stage.

What, in the ever loving world has gotten into me?


Earlier in the semester, Jo told me the story of a fifteen year old boy in her class who came to France unaccompanied from some politically and socially ravaged country in Africa. Since it isn't ok for children to live in France alone without parents, France places them in host family homes, which is sort of like a foster care for refugees. This boy wasn't the only one in her class who lived in these homes. But one day, he didn't come to school anymore. He had run away to find his mom who lived in Spain. He got as far as Paris before he was caught and now he's living in London, so Josephine won't be seeing him in class anymore.

We talked a lot in that car ride home about how desperate he must have felt to be reunited with his family. We talked about his need for a family and love and acceptance. We talked about how we need to be so soft to those around us. We never know what they are struggling against.

And we talked about how every single one of us has a desire to find home. It exists. It's real. It's what drives us over the next hill to see the view from the top.

But there's only one home.

Our job in this world, is not to make a home, but to lead others on the path as we make our way there.

Have courage!