home

Delaware at dusk

"Where is home?" You've heard this question. You might consider "home" as the town where you were born and/or grew up. Adults saying, "I'm going home for Christmas" sounds foreign to me because home is here, where we live and raised our children.

I don't claim a hometown and neither does my husband. This town, Delaware, Ohio, has been our home for 22 years, by far the longest either of us has lived anywhere.

I attended four different elementary schools in three states and moved again in the middle of high school, so I don't have an attachment to any school or town. Finally, my parents moved again when I was a freshman in college, ironically back to the city of my birth. I had no real friends there, having left at age 7. There was no going "home" for high school or family reunions.

Bill and I chose to give our kids something we never had: a childhood in one place where friends and memories and family times would all be rolled into one treasure chest rather than a series of moves and new towns.

Some might think a small town in the midwest to be boring. No mountains, no beaches, longer winters than in the south. But there is a quiet, understated beauty in the century-old homes and farms, lush cornfields, summer produce stands and excitement over a snow storm in our little town. Kids still deliver the local newspaper by bike. The downtown is more vibrant than ever, with shops and an independent movie theater. I almost always run into someone I know when I go to the grocery or library. Bill and I have an understanding: if either of us is running late, we don't worry. We know the other probably ran into someone we know and took time for a chat.

Funny. I always thought I'd want to "get out of here" once our kids were grown. But for now I am content. I am ... home.

... I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.

Philippians 4:11