Home Field Advantage

Home is wherever love allows you to remain.


For most of my adult life I have been looking for my place in this world.  Generally, it has seemed like an exhausting and never-ending search to find a place where I belong - where I can set down roots and establish the man that I am.  It never occurred to me that during the entire course of my journey, I was already living in the Kingdom of God.


I have been working from home!


It has been my nature in my adult relationships to be a source of empathy and encouragement.  I did this, mostly, because I want people to feel good and positive about themselves; but, I also did it to try, I guess, to lay claim to someplace in their life that I could call my own. 


I was searching for a home.


I moved awkwardly among social and professional and familial scenes, all the while offering the best of my encouraging and empathic abilities in each place.  I  compartmentalized the different areas of my life, never allowing one place to overlap or even to touch the next.  My life, as a result, became very disconnected.  It largely remains so, even as of this writing, but I have begun fixing that. 


I have been looking for a home.


Lately, I have achieved a greater awareness of a general regard for a sense of place, and a specific regard to my place therein.  All of the good deed doing and encouragement and empathy that I had been offering were being intended as means to the selfish end of personal gain.  I was looking so self-centeredly to see what I could get out of God's way, that I couldn't get out of my own way on the path to love and peace and happiness.  I have been looking so hard to take residence in an individual home, that I couldn't see that the Holy Spirit has endowed me with such measure of blessing that the loving intentions of the entire Kingdom of God have been invested to take residence within me.  That is a concept that is, at once, amazing and incredibly humbling. 


I already possess the foundation for a home.


In the last two months I have learned that two very dear friends will be moving far away from my native Baltimore.  My number one travel partner, wing man, and hang out buddy, Chris Heard, will be relocating to Washington State in late June.  My friend from my days in photo school, Isabell Triemer, will be returning to her native Germany on June 10.  Of course, I will miss seeing them here.  Until very recently, I would have counted these departures as loss.  Both Chris and Isabell have demonstrated to me that the love I shared has been beneficial to them.  For much of the time that I have known both of them, my giving was done in the hopes of getting something in return.  Their perceiving my role in their lives as something of value is not the easiest thing for me to wrap my head around, but I'm am certainly blessed that they feel that way. 


I am creating a home.


I came into this particular phase of my life with a dearth of self-confidence.  I prayed to God for the ability to forgive those who had been the target of my repressed anger.  He granted that miracle.  I also prayed for him to bless my friends and family, and to find a way to use me as a tool to accomplish His will.  Apparently, He has granted that miracle, too.  The Kingdom of God is within me. 


I am at home.


Every encounter I have with every person I meet offers me the ability to take the Light of God's will in a new direction.  I have spent too much time looking for recognition and validation from peers, a girlfriend, the art community, and such.  I should have been seeking only the Kingdom of God.  The Bible says, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.".  So, when those whom God has given me the joy and blessing to love move on to far away places, I do not count it as loss.  I count it as God continuing to answer my prayer to use me as a tool to accomplish His will, so that His Light that I have shared with them can be taken to more places and shared with more people in an ever-increasing reach of His love.


I am adding onto my home!


"Homeward Bound", Simon & Garfunkel.