Home Again
I've been present in a few "holy ground" moments, and this was one of them. My wife and I got to be present in my brother's home as he returns there for the first time after a seven-week hospitalization for a traumatic brain injury. He took the steps in the front slowly and surely, and he proceeded similarly inside the house. As he hugged each one of his kids individually in the domestic environment they had been occupying without him, he said, "Welcome home." I've been trying to figure that out ever since in the month that has elapsed.
Did his brain, much recovered though he would admit still subject to malfunctions, transpose the normal social order of our interactions? Aren't the kids, who have been in the home, supposed to be welcoming him there? I've noticed that when we anticipate someone's processing or interactions to be a little off, we can assume this even when they are not, so I was glad to get a chance to ask him what he meant.
"I am their home," he asserted. "They finally found 'it' again."
I'm still reestablishing home in that larger sense myself. 20 hours before I was privileged to watch my brother's family emerge from real crisis, I was fired from a job I held and liked for seven years. Over the last month, with the job-seeking Internet as my window and my connection to the world, I've spent a lot of time in my house. It doesn't quite feel like home. Home is the respite from the day's labors. Home is the echo of validation after we have ventured out into the world and have done something even the preoccupied masses have measured worthwhile and upon which has been fixed a monetary value. As my house is not quite home without somewhere else to go and come back to it, more comfortable confines than base of operations, did I place too much value on a job, and especially a given job role? Without life-threatening injury and hospitalization, if I still feel a similar sense of dislocation from what used to be normal, does that mean I asked too much of my job when I had it, and when I lost it?
Even signs of hope in the job front, such as a recent interview, result in a backswing of despair if I place unreasonable hopes on them. Though I never would have read my thoughts out this way, I expected the interview to be the most charismatic hour of my life, for the group interviewing me to be wowed by the perfect experience and anecdotes, and for this chapter of aimlessness to come to a quick end. Didn't happen, and the realization that I am not indispensable to this employer at this moment and that the working world can get on without me was jarring. A friend who has been a constant encouragement during this chapter had to remind me that failure to accept the reality that the working world can get on without us and that we are not indispensable is a form of pride. Reminders that we are not indispensable to people or institutions, he said, are reminders that our true value will outlast our earthly career. How true value is that God made us in His image, true while working well, and true while not working at all.
Meanwhile, as the wheels toward employment turn, I'm still learning from my brother. He values each accomplishment as he is able to walk farther or use the left hand affected by his brain injury more effectively. Three months ago, these would have been overlooked means to an ordinary end, but his insistence on celebrating reminds me that three months from now, what I sent out as just another resume, or what I filled out as just another recount of the fact that I haven't truly made the most of the opportunities in my career will itself be a cause for celebration. God will use such ordinary, frustrated, what-else-can-I-do means for His greater glory, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Did his brain, much recovered though he would admit still subject to malfunctions, transpose the normal social order of our interactions? Aren't the kids, who have been in the home, supposed to be welcoming him there? I've noticed that when we anticipate someone's processing or interactions to be a little off, we can assume this even when they are not, so I was glad to get a chance to ask him what he meant.
"I am their home," he asserted. "They finally found 'it' again."
I'm still reestablishing home in that larger sense myself. 20 hours before I was privileged to watch my brother's family emerge from real crisis, I was fired from a job I held and liked for seven years. Over the last month, with the job-seeking Internet as my window and my connection to the world, I've spent a lot of time in my house. It doesn't quite feel like home. Home is the respite from the day's labors. Home is the echo of validation after we have ventured out into the world and have done something even the preoccupied masses have measured worthwhile and upon which has been fixed a monetary value. As my house is not quite home without somewhere else to go and come back to it, more comfortable confines than base of operations, did I place too much value on a job, and especially a given job role? Without life-threatening injury and hospitalization, if I still feel a similar sense of dislocation from what used to be normal, does that mean I asked too much of my job when I had it, and when I lost it?
Even signs of hope in the job front, such as a recent interview, result in a backswing of despair if I place unreasonable hopes on them. Though I never would have read my thoughts out this way, I expected the interview to be the most charismatic hour of my life, for the group interviewing me to be wowed by the perfect experience and anecdotes, and for this chapter of aimlessness to come to a quick end. Didn't happen, and the realization that I am not indispensable to this employer at this moment and that the working world can get on without me was jarring. A friend who has been a constant encouragement during this chapter had to remind me that failure to accept the reality that the working world can get on without us and that we are not indispensable is a form of pride. Reminders that we are not indispensable to people or institutions, he said, are reminders that our true value will outlast our earthly career. How true value is that God made us in His image, true while working well, and true while not working at all.
Meanwhile, as the wheels toward employment turn, I'm still learning from my brother. He values each accomplishment as he is able to walk farther or use the left hand affected by his brain injury more effectively. Three months ago, these would have been overlooked means to an ordinary end, but his insistence on celebrating reminds me that three months from now, what I sent out as just another resume, or what I filled out as just another recount of the fact that I haven't truly made the most of the opportunities in my career will itself be a cause for celebration. God will use such ordinary, frustrated, what-else-can-I-do means for His greater glory, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
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