Home


Appropriately enough, the first time I remember hearing Jon Foreman's song Southbound Train was while Depreena and I were on the overnight train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok.


Oh
I guess they'll say I've grown
I know more than I wanted to know
I've said more than I wanted to say

 I'm headed home
Yeah, but I'm not so sure
That home is a place
You can still get to by train

 So I'm looking out the window
And I'm drifting off to sleep
With my face pressed up against the pane
With the rhythm of my heart
And the ringing in my ears
It's the rhythm of the southbound train.


Coming back to China for what is, in all likelihood, my last year to live here, the lyrics feel even more true.  Beyond my favorite flippant answer of "wherever my phone charger is plugged in," I'm not sure how to answer when people ask where home is.


Western Pennsylvania.

Sichuan.

Bloomington.

My parents' house.

Geneva.

The Powells' house.

Chiang Mai.

Wheaton.



And that's just to start.  I've learned how to feel at home very quickly in new places (too quickly, some might say, when I'm comfortable letting myself into people's houses the second time I'm there!)


Home's not a place you can still get to by train.  Maybe because home's not a place, or because home's not a place, or because life is just complicated like that.  And while it's complicated, I'm also so grateful for all of the places that I get to call home. 


Comments

  1. DiwakarOctober 23, 2018 at 10:17 AM

    Hello Hannah. I am a Pastor from Mumbai, India. I am glad to stop by your profile on the blogger and the blog post. I am also blessed and feel privileged and honoured to get connected with you as well as know you and about your interest in teaching English in China.I have enjoyed going through your blog post. I love getting connected with the people of God around the globe to be encouraged, strengthened and praying for one another. I have been in the Pastoral ministry for last 39 yrs in this great city of Mumbai a city with a great contrast where richest of rich and the poorest of poor live. We reach out to the poorest of poor with the love of Christ to bring healing to the brokenhearted. We also encourage young and he adults from the west to come to Mumbai to work with us during their vacation time. We would love to have you come to Mumbai with your friends to work with us during your vacation time. I am sure you will have a life changing experience. My email id is: dhwankhede(at)gmail(dot)com and my name is Diwakar Wankhede.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Evening is Overwhelming

Image
I was angry the other night. Enraged.  Furious.  Indignant.  Infuriated. I felt that there were not synonyms enough in the English language to express the depths of my emotion.  The world is sometimes so desperately broken and evil blows itself up so large, casting such large and far-reaching shadows that words fall short. There are no curses I know strong enough for such evil , I thought. Except one. Resurrection . In the face of the most ravaging evil that tightens around the world, that creates fissures in cultures, that breaks the hearts of my students, there is hope. He's risen. That truth is what kicks evil in the teeth, the earthquake that will destroy the whole kingdom of darkness.  For now, we wait and work, living in age of aftershocks, knowing that light is coming, that full morning will dawn and push out the darkness forever. ~~~ ["When Evening is Overwhelming" taken from a song by Zach Winters .]
Read more

Plans Can't Keep Up With Changes (especially during a pandemic)

Image
It's still humbling to recall how, when news of the covid-19 pandemic first broke, I didn't think it was going to be a problem here.  Months and thousands of deaths later, with friends who have suffered from sickness and loss, it's obvious that I was incredibly wrong in my assessment of the situation.  I couldn't have guessed at how the spring and summer would unfold, at the changes that were written in the next few pages and chapters of my life that I never would have seen coming. hiking at the end of March with housemates April went by in a blur of confusion and exhaustion and grief as the US scrambled and reeled and states staggered with making decisions about how to cope with an incoming wave of devastation.  Pennsylvania's governor instituted a stay-at-home order that was prolonged a couple of times for the county I live in, which brought a twist I had never imagined to Jason's and my season of engagement -- in the same country, even the same county, yet no
Read more

Habits

[As a slight disclaimer... I've been meaning to post this for about a month, and just haven't gotten around to it. Not that it makes much difference, but here it is.] I was reading The Divine Conspiracy (still; it didn't make my packing list for China so it kind of got put on hold) and hit a section on how much sin comes from habits. I've thought more about habits in the past three months than I probably ever had before, because as soon as we got to China we started realizing that we had all kind of habits that were so deeply engrained we didn't even realize that they were habits, we just thought they were how life was. And we longed to rebuild a similar set of routine habits, so that we could do things like eat and buy groceries and shower on autopilot. It takes a lot of energy to consciously think about everything that we do in the course of a day. Anyway, I think there is a lot to be said for what was being said in Divine Conspiracy : our habits are so un
Read more