Homesickness. It sneaks up unexpectedly. It hits while sipping a cold Coca-cola and watching American Idol on a muggy night with friends in their air-conditioned living room. Or while getting a package from home padded with wadded up Walmart bags… and keeping the bags. (True story!) The once commonplace items inside the US Embassy building seem oddly comforting and awe-inspiring. Water fountains that dispense not just water, but cold water that’s drinkable! Outlets in familiar shapes that charge our computer plugs without clunky adapters that have become so normal to us.  

But homesickness works both ways. It’s ambidextrous and reaches into both our worlds. Once we land back in the Land of Plenty (as we came to call the US during our home assignments), our hearts again feel the pain of a traveler who longs for home. Again, unexpected sounds and sights awaken our senses to something left behind, something missing. An episode of NCIS opens with a scene of Arabs worshipping at a Mosque. My heart aches for my neighbors in Asia who have yet to accept Christ. My sons ask for rice at McDonald’s and we must convince them every time that we are 100% sure they don’t have it. When we eat at Asian restaurants, they are convinced that Indonesian Sweet Soy Sauce is most certainly stored somewhere in the back (and they’re always heartbroken that it isn’t)! 

Now that our family has returned to the US for an extended and indefinite period, it has been good of God to reveal my homesickness as a gift from Him. It reminds me that this world, even the great parts I have come to know and love, is not my home. That this life, even at its best, is tainted by sin and death and the enemy. No city, no village, no neighborhood, no physical location, will ever satisfy this soul completely. My home was always and only meant to be found in Him and with Him. May I allow God to use my homesickness to draw my heart closer to His own and find my true Home always in Him.