Finding Home
Photo of the Kids from the Block - Constance and Cregier (off the 9)
It’s been said you that can’t go home again. Well, I have evidence that suggests otherwise. Over the weekend, my mother and I returned to the south side, more specifically, what we’ve always known as “the 9.” I grew up off “the 9,” blocks adjacent to “79th” street in the south shore area of Chicago. Two blocks of families, lovingly connected by an alley, grew up together “lifing” with love and laughter. We returned home to celebrate the life and legacy of one of our own, Patrick Jerome Wilson. We lived upstairs from he and his family, in a two floor apartment building. Patrick was the middle child, who took up all the space, could fix anything, light up a room and even in his ascension to the Father, found a way to bring people together, by all forms of transportation, with friendships over a half a century to reconnect. We laughed. We cried. We reminisced. I was reminded of the grit that our parents exhibited. I was reminded of the collective care and community that sustains us to this very day. I was reminded that no matter how far “off the 9” we go, there is someone that always remembers who you are.
Our Heavenly Father is not much different. No matter how far “off the ______” (you name what you will) we go, there He is to pull us in and gently remind us that we are His. Similarly to our time together, there was no need to provide explanation of our past, our entanglements with the enemy of our soul, the tragedies we’ve triumphed, or the hardness we’ve healed from. He simply desires for us to “return.” II Chronicles 30:9 decrees, “For the Lord your God is gracious and compassionate. He will not turn His face from you if you return to Him.” Over the weekend, I witnessed embraces, kisses, exchange of phone numbers, sharing of pictures and meals - each action serving as a deliberate and delicate affirmation of how He loves. I wonder what would be the outcome if we expected our relationship with God to present in a similar vein. We can never ready ourselves for the Father. What instead is required is a willingness to simply show up. Religiosity suggests otherwise. It makes us feel that our performative is critical, even necessary for us to encounter God. Talk about the biggest lie ever told. None such antics are expected, not now, not ever.
Coming to the Father is just like coming home. Home knows your identity. Home knows your worth. Home knows your shortfalls, missteps and mistakes and yet still holds you close. Home knows the extent to which you can wander off the block - even off “the 9,” and continues to provide a compass to find your way back to what has always nourished your soul. Home reminds you of who you are and whose you are, even when the world offers abandonment and rejection. Even when someone or something attempts to remove, rewrite and reconstruct your history, home arises to restore, reconstitute and reform.
I live thousands of miles away from “the 9,” from what I will forever consider and name as home, but the tenets that represent the essence of it is available to me and you at any time. God is always nigh. In the time to come, those closest to Patrick, his wife, children, mom, brothers, bros and all who loved him may encounter some dissonance, some sense of perplexity of where home can be found. May I offer a reminder that “home” knows and is prepared to hold you in your disorientation. God can hold our anger, our inability to understand His sovereignty, our sadness, our numbness. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? We inhabit home. We curate home. We pivot home. Home can always be found. Our home can always be found in our God, on and off “the 9.” Patrick is resting in our ultimate home and is already missed. Hold it down for us and orchestrate goodness with your Macgyver skills and precision. See you again. We wish we could ask our parents to allow you to stay just a little longer. Until then we will offer gratitude for you being loaned to us for a short spell.
-With Love