From Finding Dory: Home

So, I saw Finding Dory for the first time the other day and it low-key wrecked me. I mean, sitting-in-the-middle-of-a-crowd-sobbing kind of wrecked, and for all the right reasons. If you haven't seen it yet, maybe don't keep reading, but if you have (or you don't care) carry on.

 There comes a point at one of the climaxes where Dory is left completely alone. She doesn't know what to do. She's lost everything, including hope that she'll find her parents. But then, she sees the shells, and she remembers. She remembers her mom telling her as a kid to follow the shells if she couldn't find her way home. As she begins to follow the line, she sees lines of shells going out in all directions, all leading to a little home deep in the kelp.

And then the moment we've all been waiting for. In the distance, her parents appear, and when they see her, they run (er...swim?). They embrace her, telling her that they had stayed all these years, knowing she'd come back. Dory starts trying to apologize for losing them, for forgetting, and yet they won't hear any of it. She's home.

Isn't that us? We run from God. We forget Him. Sometimes we get so far we don't even remember what we lost in the first place, we only know that something's missing.

We don't know that He hasn't moved. We don't know that He's been active, pursuing us, leaving us reminders to come home. 

Home has always been an idea close to my heart. It's always been something I've studied and sought for and hungered for.
I think I've realized that there's home and there's Home. 
Our home can be plural, and it can be places or people. Lee is home for me. Bayside is home for me. My family is home. My church family is home. My roommates and my friends are home. They're places where I belong, where I'm known and seen and I have a role. Places where my heart and dreams are safe.

But, unlike Home, they're not perfect (and they don't have to be).

Because Home is one person, one place.
I'll know I'm home when I hear those words, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." Some people think they'll drop to their knees, or dance, or weep when they get there. But I think that maybe I'll run straight to Him because after all that time, I won't want to be apart ever again.

I know Christ is my home because He is the only one who knows me completely and loves me completely. He knows all the things I hide even from myself. He knows all the mistakes I've made, all the evil hidden within me. He was there for every moment of the darkest nights, and He was the only one who could bring me back into the light. He never runs, never fails, never leaves. He's more than I understand, more than I'll ever imagine, and sometimes it's hard to handle.

But I know that there's nowhere else where I belong perfectly because it's the place that I was created to be: with Him.  

Yet how often do I run Home, only to trip over my apologies for being away? How often do I forget His face, forget His words, forget His love? When I resurface from burying myself in busyness, why do I hide from the only One who can give me rest?

Maybe that's what life is, a constant being home and coming Home. Being a place for others to belong and seeking the One who you belong to.