Home By Another Route

following the wise men

Can we talk about the wise men even if it is after Christmas?

The week after Christmas the temperature in Minnesota rose high enough to melt most of the snow and then plummeted to below zero for days on end. I fell asleep one night dreaming of Arta Plage, the beach we camped at in Djibouti. I also dreamed about what it feels like to step out the front door without needing to spend three minutes gathering up all the extra clothing. The grass is always greener, so they say. Maybe I should say, “The weather is always better.”

That is all just to say my mind has been on the other side of the planet these past few weeks. I loved our Christmas traditions in Djibouti. I loved the lack of commercialism. Loved the music at church. Loved the simplicity and community. Loved the cotton candy machine at the grocery store and the meat Santa Claus and the sexy Santa mannequin (who needs Hot Frosty when we had Sexy Santa?). Loved the limited shopping options. Every single year my husband got coffee and wine and not much else.

I’m not complaining, I’m quite content in Minnesota now. But, we spent over twenty years in Africa.

And then we came “home.”

I literally came back to the place I left. I live in the same suburb I lived in my entire life. I have never needed to memorize a different zip code. I am now in my fourth New Brighton house. I shop at the same grocery store, run on the same sidewalks, drive past my high school and elementary school and junior high. We live one mile from my parents.

But, I have come home by another route.

I started out talking about the wise men, let’s go back to them.

They left their home country to follow a mysterious star. They set out to explore and discover and they went to a faraway land and there, they found Jesus. They carried baggage with them, jars of perfume and bars of gold. When they found Jesus, they probably didn’t just drop in for an afternoon and turn around to leave again. I imagine them staying with Joseph and Mary, or staying someplace nearby. Maybe they stayed for weeks or months. They probably heard stories of Jesus’s birth, maybe watched him take his first steps or, if their visit came later, played games with the toddler and shared their story of searching for him with Mary and Joseph.

They spent a significant time living as foreigners in a foreign land, hunting for the divine presence.

When the time came for these wise men to go home, they left behind the things they had carried. And, warned in a dream, they “went back to their own country by another route” (Matt 2:12).

They went home by another route.

Their destination was the same place they had gone out from long ago. But they were not the same. I wonder how much they were changed by their experience with Jesus in this foreign land. I wonder what stories they brought back to their families and communities. I wonder if they ever dreamed about the place they had visited, about the place where they had met God.

I feel like I have come home but by another route.

People say, “Welcome home,” and then other people hush them and say, “It isn’t home, Djibouti is home.”

But Djibouti isn’t home anymore. It was, or at least it felt like it was. But it never really, truly was home. Is Minnesota home? It feels like it for me, in some ways. And it doesn’t feel like home in other ways. Most of those ways are intangible. I suspect it is different for me than for my kids, who only ever knew Djibouti. Who weren’t raised with snow in their blood. I think it is even different for my husband, who didn’t grow up in New Brighton. I know these roads and restaurants and developments and ponds and sledding hills and tucked-away parks. I’ve left the skin of knees on that four-square pavement and trick-or-treated at those houses and babysat over there and spent hours and hours at that Perkins.

But. Still. I have come home by another route.

I have come home but have a different job, or two.

I have come home but to a different church community.

I have come to older parents and older children.

I have come home to a more diverse (though still majority White) suburb.

I have come home to shifting friendships, new and old and old-made-new.

I have come home and carried with me a changed self. I went out from here to explore and discover and I saw the face of God. I carried things with me when I went out and I left some of those things behind. I met regular mothers and fathers and children and interacted with modern-day royalty and had dreams and visions and played with Jesus.

I wonder what the wise men talked about as they went home by another route. What did they remember? What did they treasure privately and what did they share? Was that other route more challenging? Easier? Scary?

Are you going home by another route? What does that look like for you?