Sunday, April 12, 2015

Where my story began.

“Where are you from? “

That question always eludes me. I have lived in multiple states, in all types of towns, been back and forth across the Mississippi river, never north of the Mason Dixon line. But people want a place, a town, a specific site.

“Where are you from?”

We left Senatobia, Mississippi 30 years ago. I was 5 years old. We packed a big truck and the family station wagon and drove across the country. Late in the night we pulled into a new driveway. Little did I know that my nomadic life had begun.

Mississippi to Oklahoma to Texas to Tennessee to Missouri to Tennessee to Oklahoma to North Carolina to Texas to Tennessee to Arkansas to…

It’s hard for me to comprehend that people are born in a place and stay in a place and live in a place and 20, 30, 40, 50 years pass and there they are. It’s hard for me to comprehend that I can drive 2.5 hours and rewind my life 30 years.

 “Where are you from?”

It was odd to see the people of my infancy. To see faces that remained in my memory but didn’t always have a name to go with them. To feel arms that had held me as a child to hug me as an adult. To hear a southern drawl that had once captivated my earliest of words.

 “Where are you from?”

But it really isn’t that odd. Time has no effect on love on people on truths. These people loved me before I was and love me still that I am.

“Where are you  from?”

My home has found itself in many places in many times. I am not from a single place. I do not know that. What I do know, is that one day, all those people from all those places and all those times will be with me and will love me because I am. One day, I will find myself with people who have gone before and will go after, who lived here or there, who knew me when. One day I will go home and learn where I am from. Until then I’m a pilgrim, a sojourner, a nomad.

“Where am I from?”

I’m from heaven. And I truly can’t wait to go home.