Home Sweet Home?

On tarmac on big island

We clamor down the steps from the airplane, leaving it’s air-conditioned interior, to step out onto the hot runway tarmac.  The humidity welcomes us, surrounding and enveloping us in a thick, moist hug.  Our oldest daughter turns with a look of mellow contentment and comments, “This feels so good.  I just love this climate.”

As we walk nearly the length of the runway (there are no buses to pick us up), the airplane engines’ deafening roar making it hard to hear but our youngest son is skipping along, dragging his carry-on bag and saying, “This is awesome!  This is awesome!  This is awesome!”
We trundle down the road in the back of an island taxi, dodging potholes, windows down to allow in some airflow from the tropical humidity.  Our middle child is thoughtful.  He looks out the window and remarks, “It’s like America is this land of excitement, but the Islands feel like home.”

A lot of people were asking our kids as we got ready to leave, “Are you excited to go back to the islands?  What are you looking forward to?”  By and large, each of them didn’t rise to this question.  The younger ones would shrug their shoulders and refuse to answer.  The oldest one, knowing enough to know that people expect a response, usually replied about missing the food, but it sounded more like a “satisfactory answer” than a heart-felt response.

We can relate.  The way we feel about a place is complicated.  I think everyone can relate to it to some extent.  When you get back from a vacation, have you ever felt that same melancholy?  That feeling of, “This boring, old place.”  But when you put your bags down and settle into your favorite chair, you can’t help feel some relief, too.  You’re “home”.  After ten years on the islands we know those feelings too.  Only, we feel them both ways or with more confusion.  What is America for us?  For our kids?  Is it home?  Is it vacation?  Is it something different all together?  Based on the amount of time spent in one place the islands are certainly home, but our trips to the US, though infrequent are long—six months.  Plus there are all the natural connections with America- family, heritage, culture.  Despite our and our children’s friendships with islanders, despite our knowledge of language and culture, we can usually still navigate our way through most of America with greater ease than on the Islands.  On the other hand, we have lived lives that look so different for so long, we don’t always “get it” in America either.  So what is home?  Where is home? 

There are probably a million blog posts, articles, and books on this very subject. We may just be adding one more, but there is a reason for so much attention to this subject.  It can be difficult to experience. There’s a tension—like we are constantly pulled in two directions.  It is hard enough to know this tension as an adult but, it is harder still to see it in our children.  Everyday we make choices that effect our children. We decided to first live in Africa before we had any children, but we knew it was a decision that would shape the futures of whatever children we had. 

 

Greeted at the airport on Clove Island

We do not regret it.  There is always tension in life.  We cannot protect our children from everything.  Home may be a hard place to pinpoint, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.  We can be at home in America or at home on the islands.  We are drawn to and from both our homes.  As our children grow up and make their own ways in the world, they may find yet new locations to call home.  We hope the tensions they feel now will make such future tension a little easier to handle.  We can’t be sure, but we hope so.  

The longer we live on the islands, the longer we feel our own impermanence—like we are travelers and we will always be travelers.  And yet, we still have places where, when we arrive, we find ourselves saying to ourselves, “This feels so good.  I love it here.  This is awesome.  This feels like home.”  

Back to their rain-time fun at home on Clove

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We made it all the way back to Clove Island! A colleague waited at the hospital in mainland Africa for 2+ hours for our COVID results, but we had them all for our flight to the islands! We are thankful for our old teammates and friends (including Ma Imani) on the big island that we got to see on our way through. We’re thankful for a uneventful flight to Clove Island. We’re thankful for all the island friends and neighbors we’ve been able to reconnect in the past few days. We’re thankful that we’ve adjusted back to the time zone and sleeping well again.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Most of our luggage is supposed to come to Clove Island by boat, but apparently we chose a boat captain that didn’t have his act together, so we don’t have our bags yet. A friend is intervening on our behalf to get the bags on a different boat and we hope to have them on Wednesday! This week is about reconnecting— we have meetings scheduled to sit individually with all our teammates and a potential teammate. Pray that we’d have good times learning where everyone is at and have a clear sense of how we should move forward in the coming months as a team. Pray for us and our kids as we reconnect with islanders and that we would have opportunities to share truth and light this week. As we move back into our house, we’ve been given the news that we’ll have to move out by the spring so they can use the house for a wedding— pray for us as consider whether to look for a new house right away or stay in this house for as long as we can.