To Be Known

 I am back home. It's so nice. 

Home is a weird thing because it changes. If you move somewhere, that's your home. But where your family lives, that's your home. In some ways, Starr Valley is my realest home because it's where I've grown up and experienced so much. In other ways, my apartment in Georgia, that I chose and created and bought furniture for and established, was more mine than this house in Starr Valley ever was. We take more ownership of things we work for. I've found and worked for a lot of places, people, and experiences so different from where I came from that feel like home, and I'm grateful for each one. 

While I didn't create this home in Starr Valley, the people and experiences I had here created me. It was kind of fun to move to Georgia and be so anonymous. It's so freeing to have no one know you or even your place, family, culture, or anything. But it's so comforting to be known.  

It's really satisfying to create a home alone or with people you found and chose. But ultimately, home is inseparable from family. Here in Nevada, I am known. More people in Elko County know me than I even know. They say "Hi Clarissa!" know my family and understand where I came from. And leaving and returning helps me see something familiar with such new eyes. 

I'm so grateful for my family, especially. They don't always see everything exactly how I do, but they see me! They really, really know all that I've been through and who I am. They've known me in every stage and seen the ups and downs and lots and lots of in between. And I know them. I think the sagebrush and sunsets and the house that Grandpa built way before I was born also know me. They are supporting me physically now, but they will continue to support me emotionally wherever I go. 

I want to go out into the world and see, experience, meet, learn, and create. Then, at the end of the day or the school year or the decade or whatever, I want to come home and feel safe and be known again. 

It's a lot like our journey from our heavenly home. We need to be here, experiencing life and gaining knowledge and understanding. Then, someday, we need to go back and see our old heavenly home, our loving eternal family, and our very own selves anew. How wonderful it will feel in that day to not just be home for a summer or a pit spot, but to be home to go no more out. We will finally, actually be in our truest, realest, most lasting home of all. It will be ours that we created and jointly authored with Christ, the home of the ones we love the most, and the place where we are absolutely perfectly known.