Welcome Home?

“Going home” implies the return to a safe, familiar place. I don’t know where home is in this country. I have spent 23 out of the past 27 years outside the US. When I return after 3-4 years, nothing has stayed the same. People move, marry, grow up, get old, change. Places change. I change. I no longer understand cultural cues. I think differently. When I greet someone, I don’t know whether to kiss, hug, shake hands, or just smile from a distance. I am not like the people in this country.

Where is home? Maybe when I accepted the call to be a missionary, I gave up the right to feel at home in my birth country. As I write this, I’m sitting in a comfortable church as the praise team leads songs in English. My mind wanders to a small group of believers in Riobamba, Ecuador. Right now, they are praising God in Spanish. I want to be there. They are the people with whom I share, pray, laugh, play and cry. When we return to Ecuador in 6 months, I will feel more at home than I feel at this moment.

If you have an opportunity to greet a missionary as she returns to the US, please do not say “Welcome home!”.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Phil. 3:20