My Longing for "Home"

I'm not exactly sure how to classify how I'm feeling. Maybe it's homesickness. But I'm not sure. I love my family and I miss them like just about every college student. But my desire isn't really for home. The last time I was home I felt somewhat like a stranger in my own home. I was living out of a suitcase in my own room because most of my stuff was still in my dorm at Biola. My dorm room sort of feels like home now. I feel comfortable there, and I belong there. When I go home for the weekend, I miss Biola, my Biola friends, and even my comfortable little "corner of paradise" known to most as room 326 in Sigma Chi.

But there's a longing in me for other things of home. I miss the country. I miss cruising through the country with my windows rolled down, blasting praise songs and singing at the top of my lungs. I miss driving through Oildale blasting "Singin' With the Saints" by the Gaithers. I miss having a stick-shift pick-up at my disposal. I miss being able to see the stars. I miss my little country church with its church potlucks, wonderful little munchkins, and all the love and old hymns that abound there. I miss being able to shoot a shot-gun. I miss being a country girl. I'm listening to "Church in the Wildwood" sung by Andy Griffith, and it pricks a pain in my heart for all things country.

I miss my friends from high school. My friends who are in Bakersfield and all over the world. My friends who call me "Cinnabon." My friends who remember what I was like during my freshman year of high school and can look at me now and see how God works to change hearts. My friends who know that the only reason I am a sociology major is because God has changed me and my heart.

Don't get me wrong...I love Biola. It's a dream come true in so many ways. I still stop myself as I'm walking to class and remind myself that I am really truly a student at Biola. I look at my Torrey group and cannot figure out how I am so blessed to get to know these people. I sit in a lecture about Plato given by Dr. Reynolds and know that I am getting a top-notch education, and I could not wish for better. I make eye contact with Elizabeth and know that God put the two of us together as friends for a reason because we struggle with the same things, laugh at the same things, and find joy in many of the same things.

Despite these wonderful blessings at Biola, I will never be a SoCal girl at heart. My heart belongs in the country with clear blue skies, cowboy boots, Levi jeans, handmade flowered skirts, country music, dirt roads, pick-ups, bonfires on New Years Eve, and good home-cooked country chili with cornbread. I'm a little country girl who is ready to rock the world, as the song by Brooks and Dunn says.