Tell Me, Where is the Road

(6/16/10: Go out of town with limited Internet connectivity, and daily writing gets to be hard. But I made sure to jot down little things of joy and gratitude so I could catch up here.)

Day 159

Did you ever have a home that changed while you were living away from it? When I was in high school, I saw it happen to most of my away-at-college and serving-a-mission siblings when we moved to a new state, a new house. A new home. It was a change, true, but not one like it was for my siblings.

My parents stayed kept this home all throughout my college years. Both colleges, in fact. And then, just as I was relocating for a job, just a few hours from my home and permanent residence, my parents changed that permanent residence. They moved thousands of miles away.

I’ve never been able to call that place home. While I’d visited it once before, it was very brief and a few years before my parents were there. I could not claim that place as my home. For the last 2+ years, I have felt so misplaced. I live where I do, but it hasn’t been home. Especially considering that I’ve just completed my 3rd move within this place. I feel no permanency here, and just can’t find the ability to put down any roots. But I have no place to claim as my own. All of my childhood homes were there in building, but not in spirit.

I have finally been able to take a vacation to the house my parents live in. It meant so much to talk around the house I’d only seen in pictures. I could envision what their life has been for the last 2+ years. I began to see the things that marked my growing up, and this strange house started to become my home. There were the children’s books I’d read when I was young. There were the cascades of movies we watched often as a family. There were the stacks of games only our family could love to play so much. There was the old dining room table, at least twice my age that has put on as many miles if not more as my car. But mostly, I felt the same love and spirit in that home as had been in all the other homes my parents had created for me and my siblings.

A little piece of me began to feel a little less misplaced.

In the evening, I was able to attend my brother’s last high school concert. (I always knew he was a great singer! So glad he finally made his way into the singing world.) The program listed the last song as “The Road Home.” I sang a song of that title. The BYU (audition) choirs sang it together my junior year. That was the year we 4 choirs had songs recorded for a CD. Every song had some tie-in to the theme of home. Indeed, the CD title is “The Road Home.”

I thought it would be too ironic that my brother’s last song in his concert would be this song that I have so many memories and connections with. But as soon as the director played the chords for the a cappella piece, I knew it was “my song.” I mouthed along with the words. I cried from the memories I had of what that song meant to me as a young college student living far from home. I cried from what I knew it was like to be a young single adult living far away from any kind of home.

But I also cried as I knew that home is where the heart is. And I’ve been reassured that part of my heart still rests with my family—even in this house I never lived in.

And I am so grateful I found my road home.

The Road Home

Tell me, where is the road

I can call my own,

That I left, that I lost

So long ago?

All these years I have wandered,

Oh when will I know

There’s a way, there’s a road

That will lead me home?

After wind, after rain,

When the dark is done,

As I wake from a dream

In the gold of day,

Through the air there’s a calling

From far away,

There’s a voice I can hear

That will lead me home.

Rise up, follow me,

Come away, is the call,

With the love in your heart

As the only song;

There is no such beauty

As where you belong;

Rise up, follow me,

I will lead you home.