Nehemiah 1

I woke up this morning with a sense of happiness and contentment. Usually, I wake up with a heavy feeling, thinking about my list of to-do’s for the day or re-hashing past conversations and feeling shame. I’m told this is due to undiagnosed ADHD. I’m not sure about that. Whatever the reason, I didn’t wake up like that this morning. Today, I woke up happy. Why? My son is home from college for the weekend, and I’ve missed him.

He said it feels different. Home feels different. His dad and I explained that’s a normal feeling. Going away to college is a huge change, and coming home is affected by that change. It isn’t a bad thing. He is in the process of untangling his connections here in our home so they can be extended to a new home in the future. It’s an odd process, this nest-leaving. Some of those tangled roots are deep, and the uprooting is a bit painful and uncomfortable. Mostly for me, his tearful mom.

As I stated in my last post, I’ve experienced homesickness my whole life – always looking for the dirt that will feel just right for my roots to relax and extend into. I understand the strange feeling of coming “home” after moving away. It smells a little different. It sounds weird, noises you don’t quite remember. The light hangs oddly in the room you sleep in, the room that used to be yours but now feels like an extra room in your parents’ house. But, all of this is good. It’s an ongoing reminder that this world is not our home.

C. S. Lewis spoke of this in his classic Mere Christianity. The chapter called “Hope” describes the longing we have for Heaven, saying, “Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.”

And of course, I can’t omit his most famous line from this chapter, a quote that settles into my brain like water for thirsty house plants: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

We were made for another world. We were made for Heaven, and it calls us! Every time I open the front door to let my moose-sized Labradoodle out for a jaunt, I hear this call towards home. It’s in the way the leaves let go suddenly from a tree limb in fall, the way ice forms long teeth along the porch roofline, and in the way hummingbirds come back to the same hook for red water even if the feeder isn’t there yet. Home pulls at my torso, right where my heart beats at close to 105 bpm (why is mine so fast always?), and it causes a brief catch in my breath – a longing that can’t be answered even on the brightest summer day. Maybe you’ve felt this, too? A rush of fondness for a place you haven’t seen yet, a forlorn, empty feeling, but not sad – no. Very full and happy, because this empty feeling reminds us that Heaven is real! We are looking for that city (Hebrew 11:8-10; 13:12-14), the city made by God and planned for us to dwell in, where Jesus is.

Nehemiah knew homesickness; it was his constant companion. He lived in exile, in the city of the enemy of his people, there by God’s sovereign plan, but homesick still. And then, a visitor from home arrives! Nehemiah asks about the remnant, the exiles who have been able to return and start to rebuild the temple and the city. And the answer breaks his heart. He weeps and mourns for days, and then he prays. He confesses sin, his own and the nation’s sin together, “…we have sinned…we have acted very corruptly…”

And the lesson that I grab from this prayer is so simple – let your sorrow lead you to prayer. Let your homesickness, your longing for Heaven, your displaced, exiled, uncomfortable feelings press you into prayer.

The weekend with my son at home ended. On a Monday, I drove him to meet his ride back to campus. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying on the thirty minute drive to the gas station. I asked a couple of light-hearted questions and then asked how I could pray for him. He had a speech that week, so I promised to mention him to the Father. I parked at a pump so I could fill up my tank. He pulled his bags out of the car, his trombone, a basket filled with freshly washed clothes, his backpack. Such an ordinary exchange! No one could see that my heart was wide open, tears lining up behind my lashes. I grabbed a quick hug before he climbed into the passenger seat of his friend’s car. I told him I love him, got back into my car, and watched them pull away, whispering to myself, “Wait until he can’t see you…just wait.” Then, I cried the whole way home. I was praying for my son through the tears, not that he would move back home and never leave, but that God would let him stay right where he is. What a strange journey this is, parenting adults! I miss them all so much, but I want them to be exactly where God has them. Even here, in this odd place between a full house and an empty nest, homesickness settles into my chest like a chronic case of bronchitis, heavy, tight breaths.

At the end of the first chapter of Nehemiah, there is a desperate plea for God to show mercy and give Nehemiah favor in the sight of the king. See, Nehemiah fully intended to ask King Artaxerxes to allow him to go home and help his people rebuild. It was a big ask. It meant the king would lose something valuable and trusted, someone valued and trusted with the king’s very life. Verse eleven just casually drops this information like a scene at the end of part one of a two-part mystery series. You can almost hear the dramatic pause before Nehemiah records, “Now I was cupbearer to the king.”

I guess, stay tuned until next time. And consider this…

“How lovely is your dwelling place,
    O Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
I long, yes, I faint with longing
    to enter the courts of the Lord.
With my whole being, body and soul,
    I will shout joyfully to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
    and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young
at a place near your altar,
    O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, my King and my God!
What joy for those who can live in your house,
    always singing your praises. Interlude”

Psalm 84: 1-4 (New Living Translation)