Home

I'm going home soon, for Christmas. I'm so excited to be there and to see everybody. But thinking about it and telling people that I'm going home has caused me to think a great deal about the concept of home. In one of my favorite movies, Garden State, there is a scene where the protagonist is speaking with his new girlfriend in a swimming pool and he says to her, "You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone." She quickly responds by saying "I still feel at home in my house." He responds by saying, "you'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place." I like that scene.
In some sense I think I can inversely identify with that scene. I see people who have that same kind of concept about home, where once they've left the house they grew up in for the world, they just can't find their home. In the movie he finds his home again as he falls in love with his girlfriend and begins to experience life anew. Lucky for me, I can only identify with his thoughts on home in an abstract manner, it has been the opposite for me. I feel like telling people who ask if I'm going home for Christmas that I'm flying home on the 21st, then I'm going to drive home with my sister, then I'll go back home for a few days with my grandparents, until I fly back home. If that last sentence doesn't make sense, don't worry, I hope it will.
The phrase "home is where the heart is" may be trite and cliche in many ways, but it also contains a great deal of truth. In my life, I have been truly blessed to find home wherever I have lived. Pinedale was my home growing up, and every time I return, although it has changed drastically since I left, I feel at home. I feel like I'm returning to a place that will always hold a special place in my heart, a place that truly is my home. But whenever I got to Pleasant Grove, whenever I get to see my grandparents who so generously allowed me to live with them while I went to school, I also feel like I've returned home. In Pleasant Grove I had so much family and I made so many friends that whenever I go there, I can't help but feel love. When I'm in Pleasant Grove I am home.
Finally, I'm here in Richmond. I moved out here in August without knowing a single soul closer than Charlotte, North Carolina. In a few short months I have come to know and love so many people. The bishop here told me on Sunday that I am one of his "peeps" and I have a place to go for every holiday if I need to. As surely as I know that my friends in Utah and Wyoming will go out of their ways to help me, I know that my friends here in Richmond will do the same.
What is the meaning of home? Where is it that we can truly call home? For me, the answer has fortunately been everywhere I go. It may take some time, it was a while before I could call the areas on my mission home, but the more I live the more I realize that home is where I am. Home is where I feel comfortable, and where my dearest, closest friends are. I can't wait to go home for Christmas, and I can't wait to return home for New Year's and see my grandparents, I can't wait to return home and start my study of the law back up. How did I get to be so fortunate as to find a home wherever I go?