Redefining Home
Tennessee is the only home I’ve ever known. While that may change, I have stepped into a new paradigm of what home really means.
Over the years, God has redefined the meaning of home.
At my beginning, home was my mom, but I soon found out that this definition was temporary at best. Loss and grief unraveled this earthly definition, and propelled me to search for a man I didn’t know.
Then home became a church filled with people who helped me through this part of my life I didn’t think I could survive. Praise God, He proved me wrong, time after time. Still, this definition of home was incomplete, it wasn’t quite right.
The Whisper That Changed Everything
It’s always His still small voice that leads me from katastic adventure to katastic adventure. He’s the perfect author of this epic odyssey of great transition.
With a single whisper — “You can always go back” — I was thrusted into uncharted waters, bound by the Spirit like in Acts 20:22:
“And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there.”
In the moment, it was the scariest thing I’d ever done — and I’ve even zip-lined through a monsoon in another country — with lightning and thunderings too close for comfort.
The source of my comfort was being shaken. Comfort creates a false bottom where lies, offenses, accusations, spoiled fruit, and false narratives can hide. Where we will be enabled to remain in immaturity or complacency. It will stunt our growth. We need not comfort, but the COMFORTER, the Holy Spirit.
So when we are getting comfortable — even in a good place — God always sends an agitation to push us out.
A Safe Haven — But Not Home
With lots of stories in between that I won’t dive into (We’d be here for hours), the uncharted waters brought me to a safe haven. It was a refuge, a place of deep healing, but it wasn’t quite home.
It was more like a gas station — refueling — not the place where I was meant to stay.
This season was a place of tension for me. For I longed to belong, longed for fathers, mothers, and mentors, but it never seemed to happen. I would at many times be in the community but still feel like I was on the outside looking in. I didn’t comprehend how jealous God was for me; how He is willing withhold good things from me for my own good. In the moment it didn’t feel so good, but I hadn’t learned how to be first fathered by God.
“Sometimes you have to leave a good thing to move into God’s next thing.”
Steve Wilson’s words both gripped and settled my heart with peace. My heart and time were divided between two really great places. Two places I knew Holy Spirit was showing up at. Each time I’d cross the entryway doors, I knew I was in the right place — I was supposed to be here…
Until my heart couldn’t handle it anymore. The tipping point came without notice. I spent the season with my heart in two places at once. As my grace lifted for the season, I cried to God: “I just want to go home.”
His answer caught me off guard as His still small voice gave the permission my heart cried out for. It was time to go home.
And… my compass of home pointed to one place more than the other.
Me and My Crooked Toe
On the night of Thursday, April 22, 2021, God met me — and my crooked toe.
There was a word of knowledge from a brother in Christ for healing for a crooked toe. At that time, I was struggling with joint pain because of psoriasis. In the God scheme of things, it was never about the crooked toe.
As he prayed, he had seen Jesus washing my feet. He asked permission to echo the Father’s actions, found a bowl, and filled it with warm water.
My friend humbly prayed and washed my feet. I could feel the presence of God along with my friends surrounding me. It was the early formation of a family — the one in which God placed this “lonely” in.
I was ushered into an encounter I will never forget.
God spoke. After all, one word from God will alter the trajectory of your life.
He brought to my mind the verse in Matthew 10:14. That if the people in a town would reject, dust your feet off and move on.
Matthew 10:14 (NASB20)
“And whoever does not receive you nor listen to your words, as you leave that house or city, shake the dust off your feet.”
God explained:
“This was a washing, not just a dusting. For the things you’ve walked in the past season, you will not walk in them going forward. Especially rejection. Especially abandonment.”
It was a moment of personal deliverance from the Lord Almighty Himself. He delivered me unto Him with the finality of His words:
“You will no longer know abandonment.
Abandonment will no longer be your companion.”
I knew something monumental in me had shifted. His word never comes back void; it always returns with fullness; its completed work in me. Looking back with eyes of understanding, I see the gravity of that moment. It was the breaking that would conceive and birth belonging. It was the mustard seed of what I walk in now.
Gratitude adorns my heart for this simple act of obedience from my friend. Without the breaking of this stronghold, it would have tainted the promise my life attests to —the promise of family.
Without being delivered from abandonment, I would never be able to know and trust family; I would never find home.
Pushing the Button
Yet God wasn’t done redefining home for me. I was about to walk into another transition, that would open doors I didn’t even know existed.
It’s wild how a single decision can be a catalyst for change.
All it took was pushing a button.
Sounds simple enough… but the bombardment of the enemy’s lies almost made me abort my decision.
It took a wise friend’s encouragement to help me parry the blows of accusations that I had let disqualify me. (Community is important.)
That simple push of a button opened up a whole new world. It’s the byproduct of walking the narrow path, but it came in the form of community. It was a family I needed, but didn’t know existed.
It became an invitation — an adventure of living a lifestyle of “into the unknown.”
Home Is a Person
Through this invitation, the Lord brought me into a revelation:
Home is not a place, but a person.
His name is Jesus.
When I make Him my home, I’m never lost. Wherever I go, I’m home because He goes with me — and I find an expansion of family that exceeds all my expectations.
Every katastic adventure plays this out. Different people, different places, but as I go, I extend my tent peg.
He’s calls us as a bridge — connecting region to region, friends to friends, sons to fathers, and fathers to sons.
In this revelation I’m never short of family. I told the Lord once: My goal is to know someone from every state. The still small voice replied, “Just the states?” My eyes grew wide as the question ignited me to dream bigger. How I long to bridge the nations.
Never have the words from I Thank God resonated more in my heart than they do right now:
“I met a man I didn’t know,
and found my way back home.”
Each place of transition was truly a katastic adventure — but the cost? My comfort.
Where adventure begins, comfort must end…
To be continued…