So Good to be HOME

During the seven years of our marriage, Jeremy and I have been thinking a lot about what "home" means. Is it the place where you spent your formative years growing up? The place where you go back to visit your family? An area that you love and have good memories? Is it simply...the space where you live? I know we all have different interpretations of what home is to us.

We also have been influenced greatly by our favorite author/poet/activist Wendell Berry, who writes in the novel Hannah Coulter,

"I think he gave up the idea that there is a better place somewhere else. There is no 'better place' than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we've got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to heaven."

Jeremy and I chose to move to northeast Tennessee three and a half years ago because we wanted to live here. This area, where we spent four years in college, called us back and, in hindsight, it seemed to call us home. Since our return, we have been on a tedious journey of figuring out why and how to stay...and how to explain this surity that we belong here to others?

Many of you have probably already heard the news: Jeremy got a job offer from Indian Trail Middle School in Johnson City last week! We consider it NO less than a miracle. Our gratitude, peace, and relief is overwhelming. I won't attempt to describe it to you.

And so, for now, it seems that we are finally home.

We do love it here. We love the mountains, the foothills, the moving water and lakes, the surrounding community, our church, the weather, the red dirt, the friends we have made and the friends we have kept, the regional music, the farming culture, the academic culture, and sometimes we are even amused by the redneck culture. (To name a few...)

This place is ours. This is the place "we've got." This is our home.

Will we live here for the next ten years? I don't know. Will our daughter develop a southern accent and begin lengthening one syllable words to two syllables? I don't know. Will we always feel this way about East TN? ...don't know. Will our pace of life slow down and adapt to the slower, more intentional culture that surrounds us? Will we begin to have lengthy, heartfelt conversations at the checkout counter in the grocery store? Will start spending our days off at "the lake" with flotation devices, coolers of soft drinks, and bags of Doritos? Will we adorn our vehicles with Nascar paraphenalia and allow the mufflers to rot off? Will we be ok if all those things DO come to pass? Absolutely. (Maybe not the muffler part...)

Our daughter was born here and we are all three excited to continue to grow up here. The roots that we have been growing have been kept shallow, until now, because we just didn't know for sure that we could stay. And now, with a feeling of being truly "joined to heaven" I can gratefully say...

It's so good to be home.

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Here is a (poor) video of the song from which I stole the title of this post. It is by the Everybodyfields, a local band, and this song is about living in East TN. The lyrics are posted below since they are a bit garbled in the video. Enjoy.




I was sick about the time we hit Virginia,
I had tombstones down both sides of my face.
Driving all night home from Boston,
I was so tired of being away.
Thinking about summer time and heat waves
And a town, it hardly ever snows,
Hitting apples with a baseball bat in August,
That's where I want to go...
So good to be home.

Well sidewalks down here, they go forever
and they always seem to meet you with a smile.
If they don't park the cars out where they shouldn't
I believe you can see clear for a mile.
Well there's a tree on Maple St., it turns so yellow,
it turns lose the leaves; the ground, it turns to gold.
My car, it always knows what gear to be in
and my feet can always take me home.
So good to be home.

Well the lights here, they can spin the head of a young man
into thinking that the whole town loves you.
But your heart is not protected from the city
it might help to get you through.
Well the downtown has given me some problems
and we've all had some growing up to do,
walking on cars and across the tops of buildings,
I think that God was probably laughing too.
So good to be home...

Down the street my neighbor's son is walking,
the north side is getting bigger all the time.
I owe the girl down at the library some money,
she says she's just gonna let it slide.
In my mind every single day is sunny,
it's so bright it almost hurts my eyes to see.
When the rain is pouring out over the gutters,
thank the lord just to be here in Tennessee.
So good to be home...

Half a mile now from the border,
half a mile just to roll my windows down.
Sitting, staring at the windshield,
telling myself "not too much further now".
I call David up to see what he is doing
and I pass him as he's getting in his car.
Down the road and take a right down State of Franklin
and we'll spend the night away down at the bar.
So good to be home...