Coming Home

Planted by Lynda Turnbull - Australia

I wasn't looking for a different faith. I was looking for a deeper Home.

For many years, I faithfully walked the path I knew.

And when I look back on those years, I am deeply grateful for the people who loved me, encouraged me and helped shape my life. There was much that was good, much that was precious, and relationships I still treasure.

Yet somewhere beneath all of that was a quiet longing I couldn't ignore.

It wasn't really dissatisfaction with people as much as it was an invitation toward something deeper.

My heart longed for connection.

For relationship.

For something that didn't come and go depending upon a moment or an experience.

I sensed there was more of the Father's heart to discover than I had yet experienced.

I knew a lot about Him.

In fact, I had taught a lot about Him.

I knew the theology of the Father's love, His goodness, kindness and care. I could talk about those things and encourage others in them.

But if I was completely honest, there was often a distance between what I knew in my head and what my heart had actually experienced.

I knew about being loved.

My heart longed to know Love.

Perhaps you know something of that distance too.

Knowing all the right words and yet quietly wondering whether there might be something more.

For me, that longing became much harder to ignore when life changed in ways I hadn't expected.

Many of the things I had understood as home, both naturally and spiritually, were no longer there in the way they once had been.

There was grief.

There were times of incredible isolation.

And somewhere in that season I began to realise how much my understanding of home — and the people, places and connections associated with it — had also become intertwined with my identity.

Home had always meant family to me.

Belonging.

Love and acceptance.

Safety, provision and security.

The place you could return to when the world became rough and simply sit with those who knew and loved you.

Spiritually, I had another understanding of Home.

Heaven was Home.

God was there. I was here.

And one day, when this life was finished, I would finally “go Home.”

But when so many of my familiar reference points shifted, questions began surfacing that couldn't be answered simply by repeating what I had always known.

Where is Home?

And perhaps even more deeply,

Who am I when so much of what once told me who I was is no longer there?

I didn't know then that those questions would become part of an extraordinary unfolding.

I only knew that many of my old answers no longer reached the places in my heart that needed them.

So I began to sit with Him.

Hours and hours of simply sitting with the Father.

Sometimes I talked.

Sometimes I listened.

Sometimes I cried.

And I asked questions.

Oh goodness, did I ask questions. 😂

I questioned things I had believed for years. Things I had been taught. Things I had taught other people.

Some of those questions felt enormous.

Some probably would have raised a few eyebrows.

And some may have had people quietly gathering wood for a stake. 😂

But somewhere in those hours together, I discovered something incredibly precious.

He wasn't afraid of my questions.

I didn't have to protect Him from them.

I didn't have to hide them to remain acceptable to Him.

I could bring the whole messy collection into relationship.

Sometimes answers came.

Sometimes they didn't.

And sometimes what came wasn't an answer at all.

It was an unfolding.

A little more light.

A different way of seeing.

A recognition that quietly changed something I had believed for years.

Gradually, I began to realise that some of what I believed about God didn't seem to align with the One I was encountering.

So I kept coming back to His nature and character.

And again and again, I found myself returning to one thing.

Love.

I remember beginning to see the familiar words of 1 Corinthians 13 differently.

I had always understood them primarily as instructions for how we should love one another.

Love is patient.

Love is kind.

Love keeps no record of wrongs.

And yes, they speak beautifully about the way we are invited to love.

But something else began stirring in me.

If God is Love, then perhaps these words were also giving me a glimpse of Him.

Perhaps Love wasn't simply something He expected from me.

Perhaps Love was who He was toward me.

That recognition began changing something deep inside me.

The Father I was encountering was not standing at a distance waiting for me to get everything right.

He was gentle.

Kind.

Compassionate.

Patient.

And astonishingly interested in the ordinary details of my life.

Slowly, relationship began replacing striving.

I didn't realise how much striving had become part of my life until I encountered a Love that wasn't asking me to earn it.

I began to see myself differently too.

Not through what I did.

Not through the roles I carried.

Not through the people or structures to which I belonged.

Not through how well I performed spiritually.

But through His eyes.

Beloved.

His child.

Loved and accepted without having to earn it, prove it, work for it or jump through hoops to keep it.

Things I had understood intellectually and theologically for years were becoming lived realities of the heart.

And then another recognition began unfolding that radically changed the way I related to Him.

I in Him.
He in me.
We are One.

For so long I had lived with an almost unconscious sense of distance.

God was in heaven.

I was on earth.

I needed to seek Him, find Him, wait for Him to come, somehow draw near enough to experience His Presence.

There were beautiful moments when He seemed incredibly close, but there was often an underlying feeling that those moments came and went.

Union changed that.

I began recognising that He wasn't coming and going at all.

My awareness was.

His Presence had never left.

That changed everything.

Because somewhere in that recognition, I began to understand Home differently.

Home was no longer somewhere beyond me that I was trying to reach.

It wasn't held entirely within a physical place, a family, a community or a spiritual structure — precious as those things can be.

And Home wasn't somewhere called heaven that I would finally reach one day.

I began to discover something far more intimate.

His heart is my Home.

And strangely, as I discovered Home, I began discovering myself.

The identity that had once been so deeply connected to external places of belonging was finding its roots somewhere much deeper.

I knew where I belonged.

I knew whose I was.

And increasingly, I knew who I was.

Loved.

Held.

Accepted.

Secure.

Belonging in Him.

There were other beautiful surprises along the way.

I discovered that family isn't only formed through blood. Life brought people alongside me who have become family in every way that matters. What I had understood as home wasn't simply being replaced.

It was becoming larger.

And perhaps that is why, looking back now, I don't see the valley simply as a story of things being lost.

There certainly was loss.

There was grief, and occasionally that grief still finds me.

But something else was happening there too.

Metamorphosis.

I wasn't being returned to the person I had been before everything changed.

Something was unfolding that I couldn't yet see.

My understanding of the Father was changing.

My understanding of myself was changing.

My understanding of relationship, belonging and family was changing.

Even my understanding of Home was changing.

And I don't think anyone could have explained that to me at the beginning.

If someone had come along in those early days and said, “But you're already Home,” I doubt I could have received it.

My beliefs were too deeply held.

My heart was too overwhelmed.

Some truths can't simply be handed to us as answers.

Sometimes they have to become our own recognition.

So if you happen to find yourself in a place where familiar things are changing, I don't want to stand outside your story and tell you what it means.

I don't know where your road is taking you.

And I certainly don't want to cover what hurts with a scripture, a prayer or a neatly packaged answer.

I'd rather sit beside you for a while and say,

I know something of what it is to look around and wonder where Home went.

I know something of ashes.

I know something of walking through a valley without knowing what is waiting on the other side.

And I can tell you this much from my own journey:

What looked like an ending was not the end of my story.

Beauty came in forms I couldn't have anticipated.

Truth unfolded in ways I couldn't have understood at the beginning.

Relationship became deeper than I had imagined.

And through it all, I slowly discovered that I had never been abandoned or forgotten.

There was Life in the valley even when I couldn't recognise it.

There was something being formed even when I couldn't see it.

And somewhere along that long, unexpected journey, the thing my heart had been searching for began to reveal itself.

I wasn't looking for a different faith.

I was looking for a deeper Home.

And eventually I discovered—

Home wasn't somewhere I finally arrived.

Home had been holding me all along.