What does home mean when you’ve had to leave it more than once? For some people, home is an address, a bedroom, or even a family waiting at the front door for them. For me, home became something I had to keep redefining. The first time I had to leave a place I thought was home, I was two years old.
When I entered the foster care system, I was too young to understand what was happening. I didn’t know what foster care meant or why people kept changing. I only knew that sometimes I was in one house, and sometimes I was in another. People came into my life, and people left. The faces around me changed so often that I never learned to become attached. There was only one person in my life I knew could never leave me, that was my brother. Because I was older, I always felt responsible for him. Even though there was an adult to take care of us, I always felt like I needed to do it too. If he was sad, I felt like it was my job to make him feel better. If something happened, I sometimes would wonder if it was all my fault. I didn't have the words for it then, but I was carrying the responsibility that was never supposed to belong to a child. I thought being strong meant making sure he was okay. I didn’t realize I was a child who needed someone to make sure I was okay too.
Eventually, my brother and I were moved to a family we had spent time with before. Almost immediately, something felt different. They welcomed us with a kind of love that I no longer had to question. There was so much kindness in the little things. Their home slowly stopped feeling like somewhere we were staying and started feeling like somewhere we belonged.
I finally felt lighter, but I was still worried about the future. When you grow up watching things change, even happiness can feel temporary. So even while I was learning to love my new home, a small part of me was still waiting for it to disappear. Then I started going to church with my family. At first, I didn’t know what to think about God. I heard people talk about Him as loving, faithful, and always present, but I had questions that didn’t have easy answers. If God loved me so much, how could he allow me to go through so much pain and uncertainty. I wanted an answer, but instead I got the confirmation that I needed. The very first Good Friday service I went to, I was just sobbing. I do not really know exactly what hit me, and made me react that way. I had heard about Jesus’ death before, but that day it felt different. Jesus knew rejection, grief, loneliness, and heartbreak. Yet His suffering didn’t mean He was unloved. I then wondered if maybe mine didn’t either. I sat there crying, but I felt lighter. I didn’t suddenly understand everything, and I still don’t.
For so much of my childhood, I was searching for a home that could promise me nothing would change, but no physical home could promise that. I realized that the home I needed was not a place, it was a love. The home I found in Jesus could always be with me, it could never leave me. This realization changed the way I looked at my past. I no longer wanted to forget about the little girl who worried about her little brother or questioned love. Now I know she didn’t have to protect everyone, she didn’t have to earn her place. She was already loved.
Reading Night made me think more about this. Elie Wiesel writes about experiencing suffering while questioning what faith means when the world no longer feels understandable. What inspired me was how he reflected on his life and looked back on how his past changed the way he viewed himself, God, and the world. I look back and see, home does not have to be something you are afraid of losing. Home is not where nothing ever changed. Home is knowing that when everything changes, you are still loved. And for me, that home is Jesus.