Mobile Home.

The light of dawn has yet to hit the pavement. My jazzy phone alarm goes off. I set the new ring tone for early mornings like these. Guess I was hopeful that the crisp sound would leave a nice imprint on my mind and wake me from my groggy state of being and plunge me into the new morning.

But alas, I fumble out of bed, longing for a few more hours of sleep. I head to the kitchen, flick on the hot water heater and prepare a few scoops of my favorite Italian espresso in a French Press -- I really enjoy that morning cup of java.

Morning always comes much earlier than I’m ready for. But it’s a new day. A new chance to love people and to keep my heart near home.

Home. Where is home?

Surely I am far away from home and family. Across the ocean and on the eastern side of Europe is not home to me. As much as I love it here, not much looks, smells or acts like home. I don’t speak the language and I don’t undersand the cultural innuendos. Something about home implies a comfortable familiarity with your surroundings. Their jokes are not my jokes and I often find myself thinking, "What's so funny?" Ways of thinking, ways of living. This is not my home.

The birds outside chirp enthusiastically. This is the sound I was looking for with my alarm. A simple reminder that I too have been given a voice to sing. Sweet and clear on this cold morning in Budapest, I embrace their sounds and hope that I too will be a sweet and clear sound. Sounds and sights in the morning. Sweet, crisp, fragile, fresh, innocent and ready to face the day are all those little birds I hear outside my door. And, as crazy as it sounds, I too am a bird. Birds may have nests, but do they have homes? -- a bird without a home. Birds fly south in winter. I too am finding myself looking for direction -- and I'm going west as the weather gets cold in Budapest.

On the Western side of the US, will I truly be at home? Familiar sights and sounds make life much easier. The sense of comfortable familiarity is strength for the day. But my soul finds little rest in an undefined place. There are old memories sweet to the taste and some bitter on the pallet of remembrances. What a mixed reaction when I consider going west. Anxious to embrace the familiar yet not wanting to get stuck in the drones of a place that has, so many times in the past, taken me far from home. I find in this melancholic moment a truth that I'm not always quick to admit. This place is also not my home.

And then I realize I will find my home wherever I find my heart.

Lord, I worship you. My heart is yours and in you alone do I feel at rest. And because of this, I sing like those birds. I sing and you hear me. Lord because you are my home, you also prepare a place for me wherever I go and whatever I do. I will never be satisfied looking to external circumstances and possessions for a sense of domestication. I'm your bird. And if sparrows are cared for with such detail, how can I worry about a home?

I can be anywhere, go anywhere, do anything – and you will always be my home. There's a sense of mobility that comes when I stay close to your heart - a mobile home in the essence of the word - that I can go anywhere, do anything, and I'm at home. You are my home.