On Longing For Home

Looking back, looking forwards

Are you a forwards planner, or more of a nostalgic daydreamer? Do you tend to believe that the best days are behind you, or still ahead?

For most of my life I would say that I’ve lived in former camp. I pride myself on being forward-thinking, and tend to be an early adopter of most new trends.

I was literally one of the first people I knew in my social circle to start using Facebook, or to buy a mini-disc player, and then iPod (remember them?). I also gleefully downsized my CD collection as soon as Spotify launched, and happily ditched all my DVD box sets as soon as Netflix offered streaming.

In contrast, my husband likes to keep a connection with the past. He retains everything as memorabilia, and still buys music on vinyl just because he loves to hold a real sleeve. He insists on keeping physical copies of old photos in albums, and still has his 90s CD collection stored in shoe boxes!

Just the other week he recovered some of his old childhood toys from him mum’s house for our son Ben to play with, including a ramshackle collection of matchbox cars, flimsy retro transformers, A-team figures, and a lego fortress which was basically an antique.

But here’s the weird part. Lately, I’ve found myself feeling increasingly nostalgic too…

A growing nostalgia

I guess some of this nostalgia might just be a natural part of growing older. I mean, crossing into my fourth decade of life over the past year is a big milestone, and it seems like a natural moment for looking back and looking forwards.

Part of this growing nostalgia might also be about becoming parents too, because inevitably when you’re raising little people, you end up re-living aspects of your own childhood too. Suddenly you’re rediscovering old books and movies and games and experiences; noticing how much has changed beyond all recognition, but also how much has remained the same.

Sometimes when I hear how our son Ben is still playing the same old school yard games that we once did as kids, it seems like nothing has changed at all. But as discussions move to online homework and which show to watch on Disney Plus after it’s done, I suddenly feel nostalgic for a simpler time gone by, when everyone watched the same thing after school because there was literally only ONE option!

The myth of the good old days

But what is this sense of nostalgia, really? Where does this strange affection we sometimes hold for the past really come from?

There’s no denying that we’re living in times of incredible social, political, and economic instability right now, not to mention rapid technological change too - all of which can leave us yearning for some constancy in our lives.

And let’s face it, 2020 probably awakened us all to a greater sense of the world being less safe and sure than most of us had previously imagined too!

So where does this leave us? Well some people deal with this uncomfortable truth by trying to control certain aspects of the present in unhealthy ways.

Whilst others deal with a disappointing present through the belief that we should go back to the ‘good ol’ days’, perhaps putting their faith in political movements like Brexit or Trumpism which seem to promise to recreate parts of the past…

But the truth is that we simply can’t go back and re-live a time that has already been and gone. And even if we could, would it really be the answer? Was the past really so problem free, or does our brain just filter out the harder parts from memory, and leave us recalling a rose-tinted version?

A deeper ache

I’ve noticed that this sense of nostalgia does often link to specific area of disappointment or longing in our lives.

For example, for me right now a lot of my longing to ‘go back’ to a simpler time, stems from the season of recurrent miscarriages that my husband and I have walked through.

Things didn’t pan out the way I longed for them to in my motherhood journey, and even though my last loss was almost two years ago now, it has left behind a deep longing in me.

And it’s not necessarily just longing for the children I lost, but also a longing to go back to a more innocent time before I knew what it was to live with this heartache.

Time has healed the sharpest sting of grief, but that quiet yet persistent nagging sense that ‘things are not the way they should be’ still remains. And I wonder if this deep ache in my soul will ever fully go away…

Maybe it’s just the miscarriages themselves, but perhaps it’s that the miscarriages have uncovered a deeper truth that was there all along.

This world is not our forever home.

We’re all homesick

Whilst writing this, I discovered that the word ‘nostalgia’ actually means an ‘acute homesickness’, or a painful longing for home.

The term was apparently first coined in 1688, by a doctor treating Swiss mercenaries stationed far from home who were suffering from debilitating anxiety and depression.

An acute homesickness… such an interesting idea. And I wonder, could it be that this ‘longing for home’ exists in all of us at some level?

Maybe deep inside of every human soul we are all just longing for our true home; a place of wholeness, and of being at one with our Maker.

And maybe this longing has been there in the background all the time, but it’s only when life leaves us reeling that we become fully aware of it’s presence.

Maybe…

All I really know for sure is that experiencing so much loss and grief in such a short period left a deep longing ‘for home’ in my soul like I have never known before.

Author C.S. Lewis wrote in his book, ‘The Problem of Pain’: “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain:”

I think it’s really true. Our moments of crisis and pain often leave us more keenly aware of our need for God’s presence.

And it’s often in these moments of pain that we’re reminded of how things in this world are simply not the way they were meant to be.

We’re still living somewhere between two Edens, and as beautiful as moments on planet earth can be, they are really only ever just small glimpses of a new heaven to come…

Longing for heaven

Maybe you don’t identify with this deep longing caused by grief or loss right now, but do you ever feel a dissatisfaction or a deep restlessness in your soul?

I think I have probably lived with this feeling for my whole life to some degree, and I have generally treated it with suspicion believing that it is dangerous and won’t lead me anywhere good. Besides, shouldn’t I just be content with what I already have?

But now I realise that a lot of this restlessness is, and always has always been, a deep longing for ‘more’ than this world has to offer. And that feeling is not something to fear or ignore, but instead we should learn to lean into it as a guide that can help lead us home…

Annie F. Downs writes in ‘That Sounds Fun’, “I think that often when we go looking for fun what we are actually looking for… what we really want is Eden.”

There it is again; this idea of longing for Eden.

We spend so much of our lives longing for more; more money, more success, more security, more comfort, more fun, more purpose, more meaning, more fun…

But what we really want is Eden; to be in a place where everything is as it should be. No sadness, no pain, no sickness, no conflict with others, no death…

In our deepest part, I think we all yearn for what once was, and what will some day be again; that place of being fully at home with God.

Yet for now, we’re still living here on planet earth, and so the ache remains…

But here’s the thing: I am no running away from it. And I’m no longer avoiding it by filling my life with distraction, or trying to mask over it with a busyness that doesn’t allow me to feel that it’s there.

Instead I am paying attention. I am taking notice and naming it whenever I see it, allowing it to do it’s work in me.

I am not yet home and sometimes I feel that deep longing to be. But will I let that deep longing keep me searching for more of God in my here and now, today?