1 post tagged “home”

Some of you may know, others may not, that I'm moving back to Michigan after one semester at Moody. I won't go into the details of why I made this decision. If you're interested, I trust you'll ask me. This series of events has, however, gotten me thinking about what home means to me.

I can use change as a drug. It's not always easy, but I always love the excitement of changing situations and places. One of my biggest reasons for going to Moody in the first place was that I was ready for a change. I was tired of my little town where the things you could do for fun on a friday night were either driving twenty minutes to go to the movies or sitting in a cornfield looking at the stars.

I moved to Chicago and enjoyed the city with all it's thrills and good times. I never had to drive anywhere. There was always something to do. If I needed someplace to relax and do homework there were about twenty coffee shops to choose from. When I wanted to go out to eat, I had options. I could choose Thai, Indian, Mexican, Italian, Chicago style Pizza, Burgers, or some of the best hot dogs to grace our earth; all within a few blocks. If I wanted to take a train ride, the possibilities were endless.

As the semester progressed I spent some weekends at home. Those weekends were incredibly refreshing times. Times to relax. Times to enjoy the people I love and be with my immediate and church families again. People that know me. People that understand me and love me anyway. I began to miss them. I would look forward to those weekends. To the incredible respite they offered.

I loved the excitement and adventures of the city but I began to appreciate  other things about the country. I began to hear the beautiful silence of the country. I began to be awestruck by the commonplace nature that I had seen every day of my childhood.

That's when I re-learned something important. Avoid extremes. I need to avoid being the "City Boy" or the "Country Kid". There are parts of each of them that I love dearly. The noise of the city comforts me as much as the silence of the country. While the beauty of the city is rectilinear, the beauty of the country is biomorphic. Above all, there are wonderful people in both places. I need to learn to see the good in both.