Home is where............

I am not unused to a transient lifestyle, as I have said before we have moved several times before. However prior to coming here we had stayed put for longer than ever before. Now after three years here and the reality of only three/four years somewhere else the reality that I am going back to a transient lifestyle for the rest of my life has hit. Don't get me wrong I am not adverse to moving, in fact I quite like it. It is always an adventure, this time more than most as I have not even seen the house I am moving to. I do have one hitch in the moving plan though. I get attached, to quickly to the places that are around me. Somehow it feels every time like I am up and leaving a part of who I am. No matter how hard I try not to I invest every part of me in where I am at that point, I always do. So I am at the moment an emotional gibbering mess (what's new you ask?).

I am slowly coming to the conclusion though that what makes me attached to the people and places I grow to love is not my proximity to them but the changes they effect in me. There have been many people and places in my life that have had profound effects on me. Being a passionate person these are very rarely moderate changes but huge big ones. The first was a long time ago whilst at boarding school, the Nuns and the school Chapel.

At a time when for many personal reasons I was vulnerable, they provided me with a stability  I would not have otherwise had. This time in my life is very much the foundation of who I am. I have realized over this last year, you can take the girl out of the Roman Catholic Church but you can not remove what it is to be essentially Catholic. When I left this school, it was a most difficult time for me, all I had and knew collapsed, as indeed did my Faith.
It has been a long a round about journey back to where I am today. My mother always said you return to the worship you began with. I think she desperately hoped that would be the Salvation Army. Her spiritual home. However, for me the routine of the Daily Office, the sharing of The Body of Christ at Mass, the reflection of Benediction and the theological ideals of what it means to be a Catholic Anglican is where I have found my home. It is not where I started, it is not where my Mother would have seen me and certainly I am not in the Convent as the Nuns had foretold. But I have found many places of Sanctuary in Oxford. Each has given me back a bit of what I have lost through my past. Yesterday I was sad as I said Goodbye to one, today however I rejoice in the fact that I am not leaving it behind. I am taking it with me, for it has changed me. As long as I take that change in my heart and carry on what has been started, I am taking it with me.
So much of what God gives us it is easy to leave behind. The gifts and opportunity left in our paths are easily dismissed. It is easy to walk away, I know I have been guilty of it many times. God knocks on our door and say "Who me, are you kidding?" It has certainly been tempting to say that this time. To stay firmly in the places that have taught me to be at peace with my self and my beliefs, it would certainly be the easy option. But I think to stay would be to waste the gifts that have been placed before me. So this time, I am taking home and God with me, to make a new home with the old one as a foundation. So I guess what I am saying is home (and God) is where your heart has been and where your heart is yet to go.