As missionaries, we live a strange, sometimes absurd, lifestyle. We have unique, God-ordained experiences on a regular basis AND we have ridiculously complicated “should-be-simple” interactions daily. All of it is mixed together in a beautiful mess! But one of the most extraordinary constants is being fully planted in a culture that (even after 10+ years) is foreign to us while still maintaining roots to our home culture. This reality is felt more acutely by our family when we return to America for HOME ASSIGNMENT (aka, “furlough”).
We recently spent over two months visiting America, and it drew attention to this tension that we feel. After being in Uganda for the past two full years without traveling back to the U.S., we were lovingly welcomed by so many people: family, friends, churches, mission committees, and even the weather! We could not have asked for more generosity, warmth, hospitality, flexibility, and abundant love as we moved from city to city, state to state (we drove 7,400 miles, plus additional flights). Every meeting, gathering, meal, or rendezvous we had was a genuine blessing. But one strange thing happened each and every time: “Welcome Home!”
Our well-meaning and loving family and friends were eager to make us feel welcome to the place they reasonably assumed was our home. But something strange twinged in us every time we heard these words…something simultaneously familiar AND foreign. Are we home?
America is our home; more accurately, Texas is our home. But at the same time, it isn’t. Uganda is our home! And it feels strange to call America “home” when both our family and America have undergone so many changes in the decade since we last lived there. It feels like a betrayal of our home in Uganda, almost dishonest. After all, I’ve lived longer in our house in Uganda than I have lived in any other house my entire life; our family has lived longer in Uganda than we have lived in any other place. This is even more magnified for our daughter who has called Uganda home since she was three years old, and has no memory of life prior to moving to Africa. Uganda is our home. Uganda is her home.
The over-simplified way to see it is that we don’t own a house, car, or any property in America (aside from a few boxes stored at our parents’ houses). At least in Uganda we own our own vehicles and we have lived in the same rental house for the 10 years we’ve live here. We own our beds, our couch, our kitchen utensils and plates, and our dogs all in Uganda. But it seems too easy to base it around our possessions.
I think it has more to do with our LIFE. When we visit America, we are visiting other people’s lives. We are visiting their church, their homes, their restaurants, their work places, their cities, their friendships and small groups. We constantly feel like visitors when we’re in America, even when we are amongst family and friends. Even when we are staying at “our home base,” we are still living out of suitcases, and it’s still someone else’s home, not ours. We are in their patterns of lifestyle, not ours.
Don’t take this the wrong way – we LOVED every minute of the time we got to spend with OUR people while in America! We were relationally, emotionally, and lovingly refreshed to the n-th degree! People did EVERYTHING to make us feel home, welcome, supported, and loved.
But we didn’t feel HOME until we set foot BACK in Uganda.
When we returned to our house here in Uganda, we all three looked at one another and said, without hesitation, “WELCOME HOME!” That’s a strange reality that defines our current life…we have two homes, and neither of them feels completely comfortable. I could try to spin that. I can “Jesus-Juke” my way to better understand that “this world is not our home, we’re just passing through.” And yes, it’s true. And yes, we learn and understand things about that spiritual truth in ways we didn’t understand before moving to Africa.
But what I want people to understand is the complication that four-letter word brings to us. “H-O-M-E” is a tension that is constant in our family; in our lives; in the lives of every missionary family I know. I think when we understand the tension other people feel, we know how to pray for and encourage them. (Side note: if you want to see our daughter light-up when we visit America, ask her about her HOME in Uganda.) Our family and friends know this tension and encourage us with their love every time we visit. There isn’t a wrong-way to welcome us. But understanding the mess that “home” is to us is the difference in feeling seen and feeling misunderstood. Because so many of our people in the States have taken the time to understand us in this way, we feel truly loved, understood, and known.
We feel this every day! And I pray that other missionaries can feel seen, understood, and known in the same way by their families, friends, and churches.
