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“Mrs. Millraney, settle an argument for us please.”

      I love the way a 6^th grader thinks. There is still an innocence of childhood, but they are learning to reason. They question everything they have been taught. In my opinion, that is not always a bad thing.
        Last week they posed this question to me. “Is a house and a home the same thing?”
     I sat down with them and we talked about it. The longer we talked, the deeper it got, and we swirled into the land of questions. That is when they hit me with it:
     “Where is your home?” They always do that...they turn the question and stare directly at me waiting for an answer.
    That is a question I have thought a lot about lately. In the midst of life ... it is a fair question.

         Let's see. I married in Tennessee, graduated college in Indiana, had one child in Kentucky, the other in Georgia and I live in Alabama.
      I used to say home was Nashville, but that was twenty years ago. Can home be a place you don't frequent? In fact, I have now lived away from there as long as I lived there.

        I would say Clay Farm Road , my parents farm in TN. While I love it, it is not mine.
          I could say Alabama, because that is my current address. But one thing I have learned in ministry is that that can change all too quickly.
      Where is home?
      I guess a better question is “What is home?”

Home is where you can dance in the kitchen, you are free to act goofy, you can be yourself , where it is ok to cry. Home is where you are free to be you.....

whoever that might really be.

Home is where you are safe. Home is not alone.

I keep going, replaying it, and I keep coming back to one common denominator.

  The people.

I felt like I was home this past week spent with my family... but, that was never about location.

     My signs from my students after my absence said “Welcome Home!” and I completely agree that with my students I feel an element of home.
   
In the last 20 years, Gary and I have moved several times. NO ONE should ever have as many “ new home” ornaments on the Christmas tree as we do. But I can honestly say that if we ever went back to any of those places, we could be “ home” again.


Even Heaven is described as home, and I have never been there.


    I wish I had a concrete definition. A map to point to and say … here! But the truth is this, I can't answer the questions very well. I can't explain it, I can't illustrate it, or even put it into words....

But one thing I do know... I know when I am there.