we are all wanderers

"The Family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to." Dodie Smith

Cultures are some of the greatest treasures in our world: food, clothing, monuments, traditions, history, humour, language and ways of thinking. 

Tis' truly fascinating and gives an enormous sense of belonging and patriotism.

Imagine living in a land of one sort of culture that doesn’t match the merger found in your own home, your school or your friends' homes. If culture plays a part in creating our identity, how frustrating it is to feel like you constantly don’t belong to any. When your home has two opposing cultures that don't blend quite tastefully, when you get driven in a car that passes streets of a culture you can’t fully relate to but still identify by and transport to a school of yet a completely foreign frame of mind to the country it sits in; your inner world can become quite restless and chaotic. All of these experiences become part of the process of forming your identity but may not noticeably hinder you as a young child when all your cares are about watching My Girl, playing dress up, collecting candy, climbing walls and digging in dirt. But when you grow older and enter into adulthood, you begin to formulate your ideas and ways of thinking.  You find yourself yet again trying to fit into a new culture; like those times you tried to fit into a new school or a new city. Suddenly you realise that the foundation you have been standing on is full of cracks. In fact, there is more space than ground.

Suddenly your understanding of “home” and the comfort you found within, is no longer. When your nationality is simply a legal form of identification but says nothing of who you really are and the country you used to call home requires you to have a visa, it affects you more than you’ll ever know. If your identity lies in your nationality, but you don’t feel at home in the place it represents, who are you?

If home is a state of mind rather than an actual physical place, then I have felt homeless for half of my life. Actually, I prefer to think of it as having lived like a gypsy. 

My sense of home was taken away in a whirlwind, without closure, all because of the consequences of my teenage drama. I may have been perceived as rebellious, but in all truthfulness I was just shy and insecure and for some reason I carried this tag of identity for much of my life. From a rushed decision we found ourselves eight hours away from home and then within weeks ended up in a completely different country. From then on, everything we had known that was consistent was gone. It all changed.
Looking back, it was the best thing that happened in a most unfortunate way. Whether it was meant to happen this way or God made it work out for me, I’ll never really know. But I am thankful to be alive, to have love and to have found home again even though there will always be a part of me that will always feel restless and out of place.

That sense of home, the kind we are lucky to have on earth, is now ever present in the man whose name I carry. Wherever he is, I call home. And of course, home is always found amongst family.  
But ultimately my home rests in a place even more unknown, guarded by the One who has captured my soul. 

I suppose we are all wanderers carrying history on our backs. The key is to build upon it and not get trampled underneath.

"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." - Hebrews 11:13-16