This is What Home Feels Like

You weren’t looking for a place. You were looking for a Person.

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:18)

I was young when I made a decision that cost me something.

Maybe you know the kind. The ones that are right and painful at the same time—where you follow what you know you’re supposed to do and still grieve what happened. Where obedience and loss arrive together and nobody tells you that’s allowed.

It sent me to my room first. And then, it sent me where I felt safe, loved, and accepted. Where I could breathe. But something was different this time.

I walked in through the back doors of my church for an evening service. I was headed to sit with my best friend—and there was her father. Pastor Cloud. A man who had been like a father to me, steady and warm and present in the way a good pastor is present.

Something in me went still.

And in that moment—fresh from loss, a little undone—I felt it more clearly than I ever had. My spirit said it before my mind could form the words:

Home.

Not to a place. Not to a person.

To him. In community. To the presence I had been sensing my whole life at the altar—and finally, in that moment, recognized for what it was.

More home than anywhere.

Just him.

— — —

Henri Nouwen called them second loves—the relationships, the work, the approval we look to for what only one Source can give. Not bad in themselves. Just incapable of holding the weight of what we’re actually asking.

He wrote that home is the place where we hear the voice that says “You are my Beloved.” Not a place we create or earn. A Person—an intimate, loving Presence who welcomes each of us home in amazing generosity and forgiveness.

Most of us have been looking for this our whole lives without knowing what we were looking for. A friendship that holds. A community that receives us. A season where everything aligns and we think—this is it.

But it doesn’t hold forever. People disappoint. Seasons end. The ache comes back.

Because what we’re looking for isn’t a place or a person. It’s a Presence.

And the staggering news is that the Presence has always been there. Watching the road. Ready to run—just like the father in Luke 15 who saw his son while he was still a long way off and didn’t wait.

The son thought he was returning to servanthood. The father received him back into sonship.

You don’t find home by searching harder. You find it by turning around.

Not just forgiven—though you are. Not just covered—though you are that too. Wanted. Welcomed. Received before your speech is finished.

That’s not theology. That’s home.

And you were made for it.

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I wrote a whole book about this. You Were Made for This is coming soon. Connect with me at runwithhorses.org.