What Does Home Mean to You?

Sometimes home becomes less about where you’ve been and more about where you’re going.

Photo by Eldar Nazarov on Unsplash

They say home is where the heart is, but what happens when the place that holds most of your history no longer feels like home?

For nearly 45 years, Maryland was home.

It was where I built my career, raised my children, formed friendships, experienced love, endured heartbreak, and buried people I loved.

My memories are scattered throughout the state.

There are roads I can drive without GPS. Places I can pass and immediately remember who I was, who I was with, and what season of my life I was in.

Maryland knew me.

Or at least, it knew the woman I had been.

So, when I made the decision to relocate to North Carolina, I wasn’t simply changing my address.

I was leaving everything familiar behind to follow what I believed was God’s plan for my life.

And if I am being completely transparent, there were moments when I questioned whether I had heard God correctly.

When Home Started Feeling Different

My relationship with home had already begun changing long before I moved to North Carolina.

My mother passed away in February 2016.

There is something about losing a parent that destabilizes parts of your life you didn’t even realize were being held together by their presence.

When my mother died, I didn’t just feel like I had lost her.

For a while, I felt like I had lost pieces of myself too.

Everything around me felt different.

The same places were still there. The same roads. The same familiar faces. Life continued moving as if nothing had happened.

But my world had shifted.

And somehow, home didn’t feel quite as much like home anymore.

I think sometimes we associate home with a physical place when, without realizing it, our sense of home has been attached to a person.

A voice.

A presence.

Someone knows where you are.

Someone existing in the world who remembers who you were before you became who everyone else knows you to be.

When that person is gone, the house may still be standing.

The city may still look the same.

But something feels displaced.

Maybe I didn’t realize it then, but losing my mother was the first time I understood that home could change without me ever changing my address.

Obedience Doesn’t Always Come With Details

I wish I could tell you that following God’s plan came with a detailed itinerary.

It didn’t.

There was no neatly organized folder labeled, Here is exactly what will happen after you move.

I didn’t know how every bill would be paid.

I didn’t know who I would meet.

I didn’t know where I would attend church.

I didn’t know how quickly my children would adjust.

I didn’t know what my career would look like.

I didn’t even fully understand what God was doing in me.

I just knew it was time to go.

Sometimes, we expect obedience to feel confident.

Mine didn’t always feel that way.

Sometimes, it felt like packing boxes while silently wondering if I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

Sometimes, it felt like looking around at everything I had known for decades and realizing I was willingly walking away from the comfort of familiarity.

I had spent more than 17 years in one career.

My family was in Maryland.

My friends were in Maryland.

My history was in Maryland.

And I was moving to a state where I didn’t have the same connections, routines, or safety nets I had grown accustomed to.

But there comes a point when staying somewhere simply because you know how to survive there is no longer enough.

I believed God was calling me forward.

So I went.

My Roots Didn’t Move With My Address

My roots are still in Maryland.

My family is there. My history is there. Some of my greatest memories are there.

Maryland is where I built a 17-year career, raised my children, formed lifelong relationships, and became the woman who eventually had the courage to leave.

Moving didn’t erase any of that.

I didn’t cross a state line and suddenly forget where I came from.

I still love Maryland.

I still miss people.

I still have ties there that distance will never sever.

But I’ve learned that roots and assignment are not always planted in the same place.

Maryland is part of who I am.

North Carolina is giving me room to discover who I’m becoming.

And maybe that’s what I struggled to understand when God first began pulling me away from everything familiar.

I thought leaving meant I had to somehow detach from where I’d been.

It didn’t.

I could love Maryland and still leave it.

I could miss my family and still obey God.

I could honor my history without allowing it to determine my future.

Sometimes, leaving home becomes less about where you’ve been and more about trusting where God is leading you.

I Thought I Was Changing States

What I didn’t understand at the time was that relocation would expose me to myself.

There is something about being removed from familiar environments that forces you to hear your own thoughts.

When I moved to North Carolina, the noise became quieter.

Not necessarily around me.

Inside me.

I had space to think.

Space to write.

Space to heal.

Space to question patterns I had once accepted as normal.

Space to recognize relationships I had outgrown.

Space to build.

I published my first devotional.

I became more serious about my writing.

Ideas that had lived in my head began finding their way onto paper.

I started developing a coaching program centered around helping women heal, evolve, and restore.

More importantly, I started paying closer attention to myself.

I noticed how often I carried responsibilities that were never mine.

I recognized my tendency to want to fix things for people.

I became more aware of the difference between attention and intention.

I started questioning why certain behaviors, relationships, and environments had once felt normal to me.

North Carolina didn’t magically heal me.

It gave me room to see myself.

And sometimes, that’s where healing begins.

Then I Went Back

Recently, I returned to Maryland for what was supposed to be a temporary visit.

I had appointments to handle. My children had things going on. My vehicle needed work.

Then one delay became another.

A repair took longer than expected.

A part was backordered.

Days became weeks.

And suddenly, I was spending an extended amount of time in the place I had called home for most of my life.

Everything was still familiar.

The roads.

The people.

The places.

But I felt different.

There were environments I no longer wanted to be in.

Conversations that no longer interested me.

Dynamics I could suddenly see more clearly.

I found myself observing things I may have once participated in without a second thought.

Not because I thought I was better than anyone.

I was simply different.

And almost every day, I said some version of the same thing.

I’m ready to go home.

One day, the irony of those words finally hit me.

I was in Maryland.

The place I had called home for nearly 45 years.

Yet, when I said home, I meant North Carolina.

That’s when I realized something.

I wasn’t visiting home. I was visiting my history.

History and Home Are Not Always the Same Place

That realization came with mixed emotions.

I love Maryland.

There are people there I deeply love.

My children have memories there.

My career was built there.

My mother lived there.

My grandmother lived there.

Some of the happiest moments of my life happened there.

Some of the hardest did too.

Maryland helped shape me.

But loving a place doesn’t mean you are required to remain there forever.

We understand this concept in almost every other area of life.

Children outgrow clothes.

Adults outgrow careers.

We outgrow relationships, habits, routines, and ways of thinking.

Yet, when it comes to places, we sometimes feel guilty admitting that the place we once called home no longer fits us the same way.

Maybe it’s because places hold memories.

And memories have a way of making us feel obligated.

But I am learning that gratitude does not require permanence.

I can appreciate everything Maryland gave me without believing I am supposed to return to the woman I was when I lived there.

I can love the people connected to my history without forcing myself back into every environment that once felt familiar.

I can honor where I came from and still follow God toward where I am going.

Following God Sometimes Means Leaving What You Know

When we talk about following God’s plan, we often focus on what we believe He is taking us to.

The blessing.

The opportunity.

The promise.

The new season.

But we don’t always talk about what obedience may require us to leave.

Sometimes, God asks you to leave the familiar before He explains the unfamiliar.

Sometimes, He creates distance between you and the noise you’ve grown accustomed to.

Sometimes, the move is geographical.

Sometimes, it’s emotional.

Sometimes, it’s relational.

And sometimes, you don’t realize how much you have changed until you return to the place where the old version of you once felt completely at home.

My relocation wasn’t simply about moving to North Carolina.

It was about trusting God enough to move without knowing every detail.

It was about learning that familiarity and alignment are not the same thing.

It was about discovering that I could miss people and still know I wasn’t supposed to move backward.

It was about understanding that sometimes the discomfort you feel when returning to an old environment isn’t disrespect.

It may simply be evidence that you have grown.

My Definition of Home Has Changed

When I finally returned to North Carolina, life wasn’t suddenly perfect.

There were clothes to wash.

Groceries to buy.

Bills waiting.

Dreams that still required work.

And a cat who apparently believes he has unrestricted travel privileges throughout the neighborhood.

Life was still life.

But I felt relieved.

I walked into my space and knew:

I’m home.

Not because I have more history here.

I don’t.

Not because everything has been easier here.

It hasn’t.

But because this is the place where I have had room to hear myself again.

Room to hear God differently.

Room to build.

Room to heal.

Room to become.

For nearly 45 years, I believed home was mostly about history.

Now, I understand it differently.

You can love a place and still outgrow it.

You can honor where you came from without being called to remain there.

You can miss people and still move forward.

And you can follow God into unfamiliar territory only to discover that what once felt foreign has quietly become home.

Home is not always the place where you have the most history; sometimes home is the place where you finally have room to become who you’re becoming.

Thank you, Arpita Srivastava, for creating this writing challenge and inviting us to reflect on what home truly means.

This story is published under Threads of Life.🌿 as part of the challenge — “What Does Home Mean to You?”

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