The City

I did not take this photo. My son's friend, Ryan Holloway (PictureHousePhotos), took it of our Miami skyline. Through his professional eye and from this vantage point, Miami looks stunning.


I have called many cities around the world 'home' for a time so far in my life: Chicago, Manchester (England), Managua (Nicaragua), Newark, (Delaware), Boston, Miami (twice), San Francisco, and Tegucigalpa (Honduras). Every time I move, I have accumulated added 'baggage'--more suitcases or furniture or boxes or . . . kids! Even after a hurricane destroyed our house and almost everything in it, we managed to fill a container of stuff for our next move. (I am convinced of spontaneous generation--stuff begets stuff and just multiplies behind closet doors).


When we moved to Miami in the early 90's, we came kicking and screaming. We had already lived in Miami once during the 80's, and we all know what Miami was like during those years: drug raids right in our neighborhood, FBI shoot-outs just down the street--we lived the episodes of Miami Vice! When my husband was offered a position in San Francisco, we shook the dust from our feet and gleefully boarded the plane for the 'City by the Bay'. Four years (and one earthquake) later, we were back.  


Miami has become home in a way that no other city I've ever lived in has. At first, it was hard, as it always is--making new friends, finding a church home, adjusting to new schools and jobs. But as the years wore on, we put down roots and embraced the diversity and blended cultures of this tropical, cosmopolitan, very Latin 'City-by-(Biscayne)-Bay'. As a family, we have marked countless birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and sadly, funerals and sorrows here. Amazingly, a few of the same children who were the most devastated by the original move here, have decided it's THE place to live and wouldn't dream of leaving, at least for now. And as long as they are here, I wouldn't either.


An old (and maybe a little tired) cliché says "Home is where the heart is." And it's true. Home is not a mortar-and-brick building in City X-Y-Z, filled with possessions that you've accumulated along the journey, but a place where you and the most-loved people in your life reside. And yet, neither Miami, nor any other city on this earth, is actually my true home. I am here on earth temporarily, just passing through, a traveler in space and time. And one day it will be time to move on.


I'm not ready for that move yet, but I hope I don't go kicking and screaming. There is a part of me that looks forward to the day when I will be reunited with loved ones that have gone on before me to a Holy City filled with the glory of God, abundant peace, and stunning beauty beyond what I can possibly imagine. I'm sure the only thing that I will struggle leaving behind will not be my ever-expanding mound of accumulated possessions, but my precious loved ones here on Earth.


When God calls me to my true home, whenever that may be, I won't have to pack, thank God.  


But if I can, I'll send a photo. 


And it will be stunning.


"For there is no permanent city for us here on earth; we are looking for the city which is to come." Hebrews 13:14