home slice

Home is the best place to be, wherever home may be. I have not lived at home for just over four years now. I hail from the great Grand Rapids, MI. That is home. That is where my parents live. My parents still live in the house I grew up in. Over the past four years, I have longed to move back. I wanted to live in my hometown, work at my home church, and hang with my home E's.

Life was hard for us in Jacksonville. It was never a place that I considered homey. One thing that was seriously missing for me in Jacksonville was the sense of belonging to a big family. Our church was splintered into different groups. I was a part of the youth group family. The teens were my kids, the leaders were my siblings, and my wife was, well, my wife, but we really didn't belong to a big, happy church family like I longed for. I must add in that we were quite the multiracial family. I had a black brother, a Cuban brother, two white sisters, and a Malaysian wife...or was that Japanese? I'll have to check the wedding video again. Anyway, the splintered existence I lived in left me longing to go back home, desiring to work at my home church where I felt I belonged. I was never content.

Fast forward to June 1, 2008. I moved home. I know I didn't move back to GR. Maybe I never will. But when I pulled up in the moving truck with Sarah, three cats, and a dog, my family was waiting for me. Sadly, they weren't Selphs or Jolings or VanSolkemas or Volz...but they were certainly the next best thing: New Hopers. New Hope is a church family. We really are just like a family. Some of us are crazy, we all have our problems, and we're going in a million different directions...but we care about each other. The environment that has been established here is one of love and acceptance (and let's not forget change). I have never seen Sarah so happy to be at church, and I'm sure it's because of the warmness she feels here.

So Loudonville is my home for now, and I pray that it is for a long time. I'm close enough to go back to my hometown and see my awesome family several times a year...but in the meantime, I guess I'll just hang with my new family, even if they are a bunch of crazy buckeyes. Word to my Loudon-villains.