Homesick for a Place That Has Never Been Home

According to my countdown, I have roughly 53 days until I am back in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The days can't fly by fast enough.

I'm heading back for two weeks in September, meeting up with my dear friend, Kristen.  We will spend the first week roaming the Tetons and Yellowstone, making our way from Jackson on up to Bozeman, Montana.  I then put her on a plane back to the East Coast while I stick around another week and hang out in Idaho for a couple of days, and then back to Jackson for the duration.  I fell head over heels in love with that corner of the world, and I don't think a single day has gone by since I got back that I haven't thought about Wyoming.  It captivated me in such a compelling and profound way, maybe more so than any other place in the world I've been to.  And I've been to my fair share of places.  

Isn't it curious, the places we have maybe never been to, or have visited only once, yet they still manage to beckon to us some like sort of Siren from the pages of Odyssey?  

I felt that way about Kenya for the longest time.  This strange, inexplicable attraction to it, even as a child.  I didn't fully understand it - and still don't - why I felt such a pull to that country, why I felt such an urge to hop on a plane and fly halfway around the world.  After I made the first trip and came home, I couldn't get the country off my mind.  I thought about that place incessantly, and did so nearly every day until I returned two years later. I felt like every waking moment was filled with a deep longing to return some day.

I feel that way now about Wyoming.  Like a homesick feeling.

Only Wyoming has never been home.

I think we all have those places, those corners of the world where we just feel like we belong, like we're coming home even though we know it's not really our home and never has been.  Maybe for you it's the secret hiding place at the park down the way.  Maybe it's the coffee shop around the corner.  Maybe it's the far reaches of some country so remote that it takes you two days, four planes, one bus, and one canoe to get there.  Maybe it's your favorite aunt's kitchen table two states away.  Wherever it is, it's the one place where you feel settled, like a piece of you clicked into place, and no matter what's happening in the world, you know you are right where you should be.   

That tells me something.

What I feel for Wyoming - that homesick feeling for a place that has never been home to me - tells me that I'm not meant for this world.  It tells me there is something buried deep inside of me - in all of us, really - that pokes at my heart, saying, "Hey - don't get too comfortable.  You don't really belong here.  This was never meant to be your home."  I think the longing we have for the places that have never been home to us are indicators of a larger story being told, one that speaks of eternity.

In Sheldon Vanauken's book A Severe Mercy, he exchanged a series of letters with famed Christian theologian and apologist, C.S. Lewis.  They were discussing the concept of time, reflecting on this idea that we were not meant to call this earth home:

C.S. Lewis asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?' Then, if we can complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it - how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.

Homesickness is ultimately the fingerprint of God, embedding a longing for heaven deep within us.  Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "[God] has also set eternity in the human heart."  When we're homesick - whether it's for the home we've known our whole lives, or for a place that we've merely seen pictures of, heck, even if it's a place that we have never fully identified, we just know there's something in us that longs for this unidentifiable place - we need to acknowledge it's just a symptom of a deeper sentiment:  we don't belong here.

You better believe I'm going to keep counting down the days until I am back on a plane and winging my way back to Jackson.  My new favorite quote as of late is from John Muir, "The mountains are calling, and I must go."  Every time I look at pictures from Jackson, my spirit groans within me, I just want to be there already.

The mountains are calling, and I must go.  But I'll let the longing for those mountains serve as a reminder:  This has never been home.  And never will be.