Our family of four has made many journeys during our time in ministry, serving both overseas and stateside. We’ve lived a transient life, living in eighteen houses in two states and one foreign country in seventeen years. Our boys had more stamps in their passports by their fifth birthday than anyone in our extended family had—combined!! 

When I think of the word “belonging,” one particular journey bubbles to the surface of my memory. Our second Home Assignment to the US had just ended, and we rode, quiet, jet-lagged, and huddled in the back of a van after a long but smooth 37-hour journey from Michigan to our doorstep in Java, Indonesia.  

It was the first time we returned to the country to the same home, the little house we’d rented in a busy neighborhood. Where neighbors had become friends, and friends had become family. We had missed our little home during our nine months back in the States, with its mossy, paved yard, its red garage door, and its spacious front room for receiving guests. We looked forward to sleeping again in our beds, sitting in our chairs, and relaxing in our space that we’d purposely decorated to inspire rest and joy. 

Jet-lagged though we were, all four of us couldn’t help but smile as we pulled into the steep driveway that led to our little home, and we were surprised to see, sprawled above our door, a banner that read: “WELCOME BACK!” 

Yes, it was good to be “back.” Good to have a place where we clearly belonged. Little did we know then that less than a year later, health struggles would bring us back stateside indefinitely, leaving our little home, and our sense of “belonging,” behind. 

What a comfort to know that Jesus has hung a welcome banner in heaven for me. He’s preparing even now a place of eternal belonging, where I will never again feel the ache of “outsider.” He waits there, expectantly, for my arrival. I trust Him and wait expectantly, too, for the time when I will be where I truly belong.