There's No Place Like Home

Living in Sanford after moving away for several years has been an eye-opening experience, particularly in the area of how much comfort I derive from being home. When I married your Daddy, I realized then (though perhaps not as fully as I understand now) that 'home' would be more a state of mind than a place. I really never expected to live in Sanford again once I was married and we had moved away. My hometown was a constant fixed point - someplace I could always return to, a place to spend holidays and visit family, but not someplace I would actually live.

I really balked when your Daddy said he wanted to take the position at the Sanford Church of God. There were too many memories of past hypocrisies and hurt feelings, unaltered by any knowledge of present realities. I also feared living so close to my family. I had come to enjoy a large measure of independence from them, and I didn't want to get trapped into the cycle of going to my Grandma's house everyday after work like all of my family does. It wasn't because I didn't love my Grandmother, but rather, because I loved my freedom, I didn't want to feel guilt for not being as intimately involved with everyone's' lives as everyone else seemed to be.

When we first came to Sanford and moved right there onto "Hall Hill," it seemed at first as if all my fears had come true. With time, I came to realize that my family did to some degree respect my wayward spirit, even if they didn't truly understand it. I even came to recognize that a few hours spend around the kitchen table chatting with my relatives wouldn't reduce me back to the status of a child again. I had made my way in the world, and they actually respected that.

Now as I drive around these familiar streets, and teach in the same high school where I graduated, there is a sense of satisfaction -- like sliding into a well-worn, comfortable pair of shoes. Running across people I went to high school with doesn't irritate me anymore...I actually look forward to seeing how much people have changed, and then reflecting on how much I have changed too. And the Sanford Church of God still has its share of hypocrisy...just like every church in the world does, but the new faces and friends I have met and made there make it more comfortable of a place than I once thought possible.

My little one, I don't know if you will ever have a "home town" that you will have these feelings for. Maybe for you home will always be a state of mind more than a geographic location. But as long as I am living, home for you can always be wherever I am.