What is Home?

I must confess, I am not enjoying college as much as I thought I would. Two days into classes, my boyfriend and I broke up, my best friend and I are having troubles, I’m lonely on campus, and I’ve already had two anxiety attacks.

When I have those attacks, I sometimes have obsessive thoughts on repeat in my head, such as “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” over and over. Throughout the most recent attack, my obsessive thought was “I just wanna go home”. Before you say “Well, it’s college. You’re just homesick” you should know I’m a commuter. That anxiety attack happened in my own bedroom on my own bed.

After I calmed down, I tried deciphering the cryptic code to myself. If I’m sitting in my home, why do I want to go home? What does it have to do with my troubles in college, which is what triggered the attack in the first place?

I think everyone can agree on two main definitions of ‘home’ that everyone has heard: first of all, home is a permanent place where you sleep, eat, and live in community- usually with your immediate family; second of all “Home is where the heart is”.

Home is where you are welcomed and loved. Home is where you are comfortable, where you can let your guard down, where you know the people and the people know you. Home is an arguably irrevocable place of love and belonging.

If you’re anything like me, major life changes tend to unhinder you. If you’re anything like me, leaving the location of stress doesn’t typically escape the stress it causes. As I’m sitting in a cafe on campus (where I’ve written some sections of this piece), I don’t feel like I belong. That feeling tends to follow me home, where I’ll lock myself in my room in false hope that a door could stop it.

We as Catholics must also remember that even our childhood home is not our home. Many people tend to call passing away ‘going home’. But why? One thing that has been drilled into us is this concept that heaven is our home. Heaven is our irrevocable place of long and belonging. It is our comfortable place where we are known. And isn’t that a good feeling?

If you’re anything like me (again), you don’t need a major life change or a new location to receive that “I just wanna go home” feeling. In fact, I get that feeling fairly often, even within the confines of my own house.

Why?

Because humans were made for our ‘first home’-- for heaven. We were not made for this world and perhaps that’s why we feel so upset with it’s quality sometimes. We were not made for the quality of earth but for the quality of heaven. Sometimes, though we never ‘remember’ it, we miss it.

What can we do when we experience that?

1. Pray

2. Prayer is our phone call home when we’re homesick. It’s our number one way to talk with our ‘Dad’ when we’re lonely.

3. Spend time with our earthly family

4. God gave you to your specific parents and siblings, spouse, and children for a reason. Love them. Spend time with them. They are your home until you return home.

5. Spend time with friends

6. Friend are our chosen family and, if you’ve chosen well, they can bring you one step closer to your Home.

And know you’re not alone in your loneliness. Really, secretly, we’re all lonely. Aren’t we?

#Home #Heaven #Anxiety #College #Family #Prayer #Friendship