If I had to choose one word to describe the last few days, it would be alien.
Friday was my last full week in the office, and it was weird to leave knowing I would not be back on Monday. I will not be gone in a vacation sense, but working, just remotely. I’ve done it before, but this is really permanent- I will never have another ‘regular’ week in the office. Sure I’ll be back, for a day to a several weeks, but it will always be temporary — in fact I won’t have an actual ‘office’ to go to at some point.
The drive home was equally surreal. As I drove through the suburbs while listening to Aradhna, I was struck with the tension between two worlds I’m living in. First I was driving a car (won’t do that very often in India), through suburbs (which exist in India, but not in the same sense, and definitely don’t look the same) on an hour long commute from work (it’ll be more like a 10 minute walk in India).
Even more so, I was taken by the vastness of everything. Giant strip malls with huge parking lots set hundreds of feet from the highway with 40 ft lit signs and polished signage- tiny little towns of only a few thousand people with miles of nothing in between. I can still remember driving through Kerela and being amazed the civilization never really ends- it just follows the road to the next town… and it all blends together into one giant country.
Mostly, I looked at things with new eyes. I looked at things I will see rarely, if ever, in the future. I looked at my country, America, and realized that every day I feel more alien here.
In so many ways, my heart, mind, and emotions are already in India. Everything here feels temporary, distant, and in some senses, unreal. At times, it feels like a dream… that I will awake from in India and realize I was simply dreaming of home. But not home — because nowhere feels like home anymore.
We’re living in someone else’s house- so this isn’t home. Visiting my parents or the inlaws feels more like home, but it’s not our home. We are, in effect, homeless at the moment.
The feeling is probably more acute for me, since Beth knows the owners better than I, but for me, it feels like they will arrive home any minute now, but of course they won’t. I’m constantly having that “I’m in someone’s house and they are not home feeling.” It feels… alien. I’m sure it will pass in time. Then we’ll move again, and the alien experience really begins!
I wonder if anywhere will ever feel like home again. I suppose India will, in time become home. Our friends who live there assure us that India has become home for them and their children.
Then again, if I’m really living in the reality that I am God’s and His Kingdom is not of this world… then this world will never be my home, and perhaps this alien feeling is just the way it is.
Either way, I am at peace, knowing I serve a good God who, in the grand scheme of things, is the only home I’ll ever need. Which is a nice thought at the moment, but needs to become a way of life for me. It’s a constant struggle to find my identity and home in Him alone — not the physical dwelling I’m inhabiting, not the job I’m doing, and not the million things that come along every day and want to take His place in my life.
In the end, I must realy on his faithfulness and love for me… it is the only hope I have… that any of us have.
