The homecoming
For as long as I can remember, I have had an inordinate attachment to the places I call home. My mother told me that when I was six years old and our family was in the midst of moving to another city, I spent much of that time with a fever of 105. As an older child, I could never spend the night with friends. I became overwhelmed emotionally and physically.
When I graduated from high school, I purposely chose a university in town, so I could live at home and commute to class. Looking back, I wasn’t really homesick for my family. I just missed my home and my familiar surroundings.
After college, I found myself, with great fear and trembling, following my husband to Texas to start a new life. It took me several years to become settled and call it home. We’ve now been here for 37 years. In the early days of our marriage, we’d pack up the car and the kids, leaving in the early morning hours to make the drive back to Cincinnati to visit our family. Invariably, as the day for departure grew near, dread and anxiety would consume me at the thought of leaving my home. Years passed, and I experienced healing in many areas of my life.
The pain of leaving home behind diminishing somewhat, but it still was an uncomfortable part of my life. Until June 2021, when I was surprised to find that this dread was no longer with me. That month, my husband and I began planning a road trip to Seattle to visit my son and his family. With the constraints of the pandemic, I hadn’t been in their presence for 18 months and I was aching to be with them. There were a lot of preparations to be made but the night before our departure everything was in order. As I lay in bed that night, I checked in with myself; I was surprised to find that for the first time in my life I was holding no dread or anxiety at the thought of leaving my home for two weeks.
I wondered, as I drifted off to sleep, “What has changed?”
Thirty-six hours later, and still enjoying this new place of healing, I found myself curled up in the passenger seat of our pickup, watching New Mexico roll by. This was our second day on the road, and I was completely immersed in the desert landscape. I adore the desert, and I have no trouble going to that quiet place within me when I’m there. This is true even when I’m in a pickup watching the desert speed by at 75 miles an hour. I was especially overjoyed when I saw wild horses for the first time in my life.
“I leaned forward, my nose and forehead pressed against the glass, and imagined what it would be like to be out there, running freely with them.”
Deep in the midst of my meditation, came a lightning bolt revelation: “You feel no anxiety and dread at leaving your home because YOU are your home now. You have come home to yourself, Kathy.”
My spirit leapt at this insight, and I breathed deeply as I recognized it as a truth. Then, a picture flashed in my mind: My ring with an inscription from Ruth 1:16 in Hebrew: “Where you go, I will go.” I hadn’t worn that ring in over a year. Whenever I put it on, I felt like it no longer “fit” spiritually. I had no idea why, but I honored the feeling and put the ring away in a drawer and forgot about it.
Now, here I was, seeing it in my mind’s eye. Why? What did this verse mean to me, right at that moment? Then, I began to see the power that this verse had had over:
My life....
I saw that I had been led away from and lost all sense of myself as “home” when I was a child. My rigid, fear-based spiritual upbringing had directed me away from myself as a place of security and comfort. I was told that my intuition, wisdom, and knowing were to be wrestled with and denied, as they could never be trusted.
Thus began my life-long journey to find a home in God but outside of myself. My love for Him and desire to always be where He was had compelled me to make this scriptural promise to Him. I bought the ring for myself so that I would always be reminded. However, it eventually became a burden, leading to a stressful, fearful spiritual journey, upon pain of sin, at the possibility of ever being in a place that God is not. Then, I would be lost.
Years of anxious questioning and doubt rose back to my mind.
What if I missed God’s will for me?
What if I didn’t hear His voice and came out from under His protection?
What if I discerned poorly?
What if I mistakenly took a path that wasn’t His intent for me, and I found myself walking alone and lost?
What if I couldn’t find my way back?
What if God leaves me alone to myself, living out the consequences of being unable to discern His voice and follow his will?
What if I went out on my own without realizing it?
What if I missed my chance to answer a call to service and He got frustrated and just moved on and chose someone else?
All of these questions had been birthed in me from sitting at the feet of those who bound and stifled me using fear.
Three years ago, my spirit collapsed under the weight of the constant questioning and self-doubt. When that happened, I made a new declaration to God that I refused to live in fear of Him. I was going to stop the relentless pursuit and second guessing of His will in everything I did, as I knew I was not meant to live that way. Once I did this, it became very, very quiet and I entered into a period of rest and immersion in Presence. But, speeding through the desert, feeling those questions again, the memories of the fear and anxiety of those days came rushing back to me.
Then, I heard the Beloved’s voice...
“The words from scripture inscribed on the ring are not your promise to Me. They are My promise to YOU. It has always been My voice, My declaration and assurance to you. There is nowhere you can go in your life, no choice you can make, no path you can take, that does not include Me and My love and blessing. Where you go, I will go. Always.”
At these words, any lingering doubt that I ever was, or could be, separated from God washed away. Words from scripture that had been used to bind me were transformed instantly into words of freedom, healing, and profound security. The Beloved is indeed my home and has longed for me to be completely at home in myself, with all the life- giving energy and beauty that this relationship holds. I now recognize this was my destination all along. We are home, and I can now wear the ring with a new vision and purpose.
“Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay.”
This is God’s promise.
The Homecoming was written by Retreat House friend Kathy Oehler. It was originally published in our House of Remembrance book. You can purchase a copy here.
Kathy Oehler’s ministry is to facilitate spiritual and emotional healing through listening, loving presence, prayer and writing in the form of letters from God and poetry. Her journey embraces the mystical path and the cultivation of joy as a spiritual practice. Her hobbies include gardening, hiking, motorcycling, reading and learning a second language. Email Kathy.