Making it Home: To Build a Home

March has been a busy month in and around my little Texas home.  I have several new posts in progress, but until I make time to finish and post them, please enjoy another musical meditation on the ideas and complexities of building a home: "To Build a Home," by The Cinematic Orchestra.

Making it Home: How Does Your Garden Grow?

It runs counter to my Midwestern intuitions to reflect on gardening during the “dead” of winter, but I live in Texas now, and last week's enormous harvest of collard greens reminded me that I have been planning a post on gardens for several months.  

In 2010, I learned that home is a place we plant gardens. Although the daughter of a man who revels in dirt and seed and harvest,  I had done little more than tend houseplants (and poorly, at that) until last year.  My church began a Community Garden in February, and later in the spring, some friends and I began our own plot in a spare corner of our apartment complex’s property. 

These earth-experiments attracted me for several reasons: I thought participating in a garden would support my efforts to eat only in-season produce; I needed a  reason to spend more time outside; and I looked forward to working with others on a shared project.  A less conscious but more powerful reason, however, is that I cannot remember a time when my childhood home did not have a flourishing garden in the summer. Ironically, for most of my childhood I disliked tomatoes, squash, and many other good things that grew in the garden, but my pickiness did not undermine my association of “home” with a place where things grew and were eaten, where summer nights were spent seeking ripe tomatoes, and where my father would often walk a wheelbarrow full of vegetables to our church so friends could take as much as they pleased.

Those Indiana gardens manifested some of the best things about my father--his love of growing things (both botanical and human), his delight in nature, his generosity--and as I reflect on my novice dirt-dabbling, I find that many of my experiences finding a home in Waco have parallels in the garden. 

With my father in the garden, circa 1987

Both gardens have reminded me how thankful I am that my home is also the home of others--definitely-kindred, remarkably-unlike-me others.  The day we broke ground for the community garden, I enjoyed a perfect balance of solitude and community, sometimes concentrating all my energy on clots of wet soil I was breaking up, and at other times discussing everything from theology to television with the person working next to me. The apartment garden was a joint project between me and two couples--Jon and Steph, Taylor and Rachel.  Working with Jon and Taylor on the garden was a study in personality differences--had I been making the garden on my own, I would have planned for months, fretted over asking permission to use our complex’s property, and probably never would have planted anything at all. Taylor and Jon, however, wasted no time, and they were tilling the soil long before I had finished debating whether it would be better to call or write our apartment manager for permission.  We planted our first rows on an unusually cool day in May, and as I made mounds for squash and Jon prepared rows for corn, with Taylor hacking away at the tall grasses that obstructed an inlet of the river, I was both proud and thankful to have such friends. 

The gardens have also reminded me that being really at home in a place involves constant care--housekeeping, if I may use the word broadly. Until we realized there was a hose and spigot within reach of the garden, we watered our plants with buckets of water drawn from the Brazos river.  The river is about thirty or forty yards from our plot, and it usually took me three buckets-full to water everything. I would lean out from a concrete pier, toss my bright pink bucket four to six feet down into the water, and then haul it up with a rope. It seemed to be an absurd amount of work for a few rows of parched vegetables, but as I labored with those heavy, sloshing buckets, I realized that I was experiencing something very ordinary for most women throughout history--the difficult and even dangerous work of collecting the water needed to sustain a home and family. My great-grandmother, a teenage bride on the Mississippi delta, had to walk for miles to gather water from a reliable well, and all over the world today, many girls and women spend hours of their days carrying water.  Although even I am not Luddite enough to prefer buckets to hoses, I appreciate learning from my sore muscles and unsteady bones that home, like any other garden, must be tended consistently and carefully. Furthermore, in order to tend it, one must often defy distance, impatience, and even gravity.

These gardens have also taught me that the harvest is not always what we expect, any more than the homes we build as adults will resemble the pictures we carried or created from childhood. For most of the summer and fall, our apartment garden disappointed dreams of lavish salads and salsas: we gathered pitiful tomatoes, scanty bell peppers, and a pittance of purple-hull peas. The only thing we had in abundance was okra, the titan of our little world, overshadowing everything else. Far more satisfying was the harvest of neighbors our project brought.  We live in a quiet apartment complex, and, as in many such places, the residents do not go out of their way to meet one another. However, the garden provided a wonderful way to meet our neighbors. Sheila, a grandmother who lives on the first floor, joined with us and contributed several squash plants. Several times while weeding, I was hailed by Sophilia, a law student reading on her balcony.  She had noticed the plot and knew Taylor and Rachel, and when I explained what we were doing, she exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! You guys are such hippies!” For the rest of the fall, I would look forward to talking with Sophilia and her roommate on my way to the garden. Daniel, who was using the hose to wash his kayak when we first met, now brings the hose down to me when I am among the peppers and greens, making suggestions for our spring planting. Les and Katie, who have four children and coach youth baseball, ask how the peas are doing when we meet at the mailbox. From these small but precious encounters, I am reminded that people are more at home with one another when they have some common thing--whether a tiny garden or a book or an ideal--to consider, to protect, or to love. 

And now I am enjoying a winter harvest--something I never experienced from my father’s northern garden. In spite of the dislocation and uncertainty that have shadowed my efforts to build a home in Texas and in my twenties, suddenly I am faced with a marvel: in a season I once thought dead, food flourishes in the dirt.  I never thought collard greens could be so profound.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. (Jeremiah 29.4-5 ESV)

Do you keep a garden? What do you grow? 

P.S. In honor of these gardens (and of National Soup Month), I am sharing the recipe I invented to use the greens I now have in abundance.  This was a use-what-I-have-on-hand experiment, so feel free to adjust according to your pantries. If you don’t have wheat berries, you might try using barley or pinto beans. 

Collard and Potato Soup

1 T olive oil

5 cloves minced garlic

6 cups vegetable stock 

5 small potatoes, peeled and sliced

1 cup wheat berries 

6-8 large collard and/or chard leaves, coarsely chopped (about 2-3 cups)

1/2 - 1 T Worcestershire sauce (adjust to taste)

1/8 t cayenne pepper

1-2 t sea salt or kosher  

fresh ground pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large (4-5 qt) saucepan or dutch oven. Add garlic and saute until golden. Add broth and bring to a boil.  Add potatoes and wheat berries. Reduce heat and simmer until wheat berries are tender (about 45 minutes). Add Worcestershire, cayenne, and salt. Adjust seasonings to taste. Add greens, cook until wilted (about 10 minutes). Garnish with pepper. 

Making it Home: The Letter-Writing Challenge

The day before my grandmother’s funeral, I found a postcard in her purse.  It was a card I had sent her some months earlier, and next to my return address, Grandma had scrawled, “KEEP - Write to her” in shaky letters. At first, I was tearfully amused; my grandmother’s memory had been deteriorating for years, and all around her house were various notes she had written to herself, such as “Billie - watch Sit and Be Fit at 1 PM!”  Knowing her habit of posting these reminders, I was nevertheless surprised to realize she had been carrying that postcard in her purse for months before she died. During college, I had tried to send her a postcard or letter every week, and while she rarely had the wherewithal to write and post anything in reply, I now saw that she had read, kept, and even annotated the little notes I sent.  

I offer this story as a preface to a challenge I am issuing to all of my readers: I want each of you to write a letter to someone today.  

If I think about what “home” means in very practical terms, writing and receiving mail comes near the top of my list.  For most of my life I have been shy, old-fashioned, and separated from many of my friends, so letter-writing has remained a more relevant medium for me than (I suspect) for most other twenty-somethings. However, one need not be a bookworm with Luddite proclivities to enjoy letter-writing. I am challenging each of you to write a letter to someone (anyone!) because I believe there is something wonderfully peculiar in the way letters help us build and sustain our homes. 

I love letters for many reasons. Unlike email (or blog posts), letters are tangible, offering tokens or fragments of the writer's presence.  The shape and color of the envelope, the handwriting, the postage stamp, even the smell of a letter varies from person to person. I have an old suitcase stuffed full of letters from friends and family, and I can recognize the sender of one of those epistles with just a glance at the paper or script.  When the people who make a place home are far away, having something to hold is comforting. 

Additionally, letters, can help us live in the tension between home and journey (or exile). This tension marks most of our lives, and perhaps young adulthood especially. When I write letters from Texas, I am trying to draw the reader into my life here, and when I receive letters, the writer is, mysteriously, present with me. However, as I described in my first post, letters also emphasize distance, and prompt me to consider how to sustain relationships when my friends, my family, or my church may be physically distant. 

Most letters I send from home, whether that means physically at home or emotionally settled, but I also write letters when I am most aware of distance, travel, and transition. Stamps stay in my wallet, so that when I travel I can send postcards from airports, letter boxes, and hotels. I scribble these cards when everything around me is strange, marvelous, or unsettling. Writing about my journey enriches the adventure, while sending a card reminds that home is still out there somewhere, even if scattered across fifteen addresses. 

Of course, I also love letters because they are such an easy way to make other people happy, and to help them feel at home. Even the most internet-savvy people are usually glad to receive real letters, and writing to them is a way you can very easily show love. Finding that postcard in my grandmother's purse reminded me how powerful a physical token of love can be. The message on the back was hardly three sentences, but she knew that the postcard was about much more than the hasty note I had scribbled. 

I realize, however, that few people, especially of my generation, have much experience writing letters. Therefore, the rest of this post contains a few specific tips and ideas for writing a letter (and hopefully, establishing letter-writing as a habit).  

First, consider a few examples. Letters can be meaningful in many different ways. If I survey the letters I have received in the last month, I find a number of approaches to writing a letter: 

* My mother likes to write brief little updates with brightly-inked pens. She writes a note about a good deal she found at Goodwill, or includes clippings from the newspaper. (I particularly enjoy the sarcastic comments she makes about the notices posted in the “Church Briefs” section of the paper.) 

* My father often meanders into ruminations about his reading, his garden, his canoe, or the work he and my mother do with college students. At other times, I receive an envelope with no message other than a bunch of pressed morning glories.

 * My dear friend Natalie always finds cute and clever cards to brighten my day.

* Emily, my favorite librarian, always sends me wonderful lists--most often lists of books, music, movies, or ideas, and usually on purple paper. 

* My surrogate Grandma, Jackie, reports the hometown news and warns me regularly not to study too hard. A WWII war-bride, Jackie sometimes reverts to her French spelling instincts, and I am always delighted to find a letter addressed to “Bethanie” in my mailbox. 

I hope these examples show that letters need not be ten-page expositions of profound thoughts (although those are lovely). Sometimes I write chatty accounts of my day, while other letters consist entirely of compelling or lovely passages from better writers. I have even written prayer-letters, in which the letter is  transcription of the prayer I have offered for the person who will receive it. Today, I would write about the two beavers I saw swimming in the river just after sunset. My college boyfriend (one of the best letter-writers of our generation) and I used to exchange individually-wrapped bags of tea, and yesterday I mailed an envelope containing a short note, a cartoon, and a paper snowflake. 

Here are some other ideas:

* Write to a friend who lives far away. Remind him or her of a happy memory the two of you share, and then write about the most interesting or beautiful thing you saw today. 

* Write to a homebound member of your church. 

* Write to a child you know. Send a coloring sheet, stickers, or paper dolls. You can print lots of fun, mailable paper toys here. 

* Write to your mother.  

* Give a note to someone who lives with or near you. Not only will you save money on the postage, you can enjoy sneaking across the hall to slip an envelope under your roommate’s door. 

* Write to a stranger.  In college, I would walk through the neighborhoods around campus for hours, and occasionally I would write a letter to the inhabitants of a house I thought looked pretty or interesting.  Without fail, I received a reply, and once the reply even included an invitation to come over for tea.   

* Send Christmas cards this year. Indulge in something with glitter. 

* Visit the Bureau of Communication. This whimsical website offers a number of “official” forms you can use to declare romantic interest, express gratitude, and more.  

* Encourage an imprisoned Christian.  Prisoner Alert, run by Voice of the Martyrs, provides profiles, addresses, and free translation services for men and women who have been imprisoned for their faith.

* Refresh your knowledge of Victorian letter-writing (here, for example), and see if you can write a letter that meets the standards of 1890s “ethics and etiquette.”

* Write government leaders about an issue that concerns you. Amnesty International and Bread for the World are good places to start. 

* Write thank-you notes to the men and women on your church staff. 

* Write me! I promise to write back. Use the "A Letter for You" tab at the top of the page to send me your mailing address, and I promise a handwritten missive in return.

Do you write or receive letters or postcards regularly? Do you accept my challenge? If so, whom will you write today? 

Making it Home: Better than a Registry, or How a Single Girl Got Matching Dishes

Children come up with all kinds of reasons not to wear certain clothes: maybe the color is yucky, or the collar scratchy, or the sleeves too short.  My favorite reason, however, is one I gave to my mother when I was a preschooler: I refused to wear a jacket because it had no story to go along with it. 

To understand this protest, you must know that all my clothes were second-hand when I was a child. (I remember having a pair of new jeans for the first time when I was in middle school, and I think my first brand-new dress came when I was fifteen).  When helping me dress for church or play, my parents would tell me about the person who handed down that article to me. Thus, when my mother somehow obtained a new jacket for me, I naturally asked her who used to wear it.  “No one,” she said. “This is new.”  New?  I would have none of it.  

Growing up in this culture of hand-me-downs and storied things has saved me from a good deal of discontent in my life, most recently regarding wedding registries.

Really and truly, I love seeing what people put on their wedding registries.  Especially for friends I have seen live in Spartan bachelor pads or serve dinner parties on mismatched collections Corelle ware, these registries help me imagine the look of their “grown-up” households and, in turn, the new lives they will be building with their spouses. 

Sometimes, I must confess, I have been jealous of these registries.  It isn’t just that I find it unfair that some people manage to get lifelong commitment and matching dishes all at the same time: of course it is unfair, but it is also very, very good. At its root, my concern has been one of validation: I love registries most because I know that for the rest of their lives, my friends will know that much of their everyday, essential household equipage came from people who know and love them.  Not only that, these gifts confirm that these young adults are setting up a household--a tiny economy of love and work, patience and grace. 

What then, is a single girl (or, more to the point: young woman) to do?  She could buy herself matching dishes and all that, but that’s not satisfying in quite the same way. Though no longer a little girl, I still want things to have stories.  I want to look at my cups and saucers and think, “Oh, so-and-so gave that to me.” 

With these ideas in mind, I walked through my apartment earlier this week, trying to note all the things that have been given to me.  As I made the list (below), I was quickly convicted that any yearning for a registry is greedy and ungrateful.  Little by little over the years, my family and friends have equipped me with all the good things--all and much, much more--I need to make a home for myself and others. 

These things are precious to me, so much so that, to be honest, I would be reluctant to replace most of them.  When I look at my home, I realize I have been given something far better than a registry. To some extent, people feel compelled to bring gifts to a wedding. It is expected.  In contrast, my friends and family have filled my house in quiet, unlooked-for ways. Even the soap in my shower and the toothpaste on my vanity, I realized, were given to me. What follows is not a complete list--I have catalogued only the things I use or notice nearly every day--and I have not allowed myself to tell the story behind each thing, limiting myself to the names of the givers.

These are the things they have brought me: 

In my bedroom: 

- quilt made by my great-grandmother

- yoga mat from Kareem
- hair-dryer from Mary

- curtains (and at least 1/3 of my skirts) made by my mother
- CDs from Julianna and Nathaniel

- jewelry from Hunter, Jenn, Mandy, and Rachel

- a sewing machine, given to my mother when she graduated from high school, then handed down to me

- framed, illuminated manuscript of Jeremiah 29.11 from Mr. and Mrs. Harrison

- knitting needles from Lennon 

- staple gun Mark and Keith gave me

- computer printer from Emily

In my living room:

-  the set of The Chronicles of Narnia my parents read to me, crumbling dust jackets and all

- countless beautiful books from Will, Hunter, Dave, and others

- an eccentric DVD collection, supplied mostly by my great-aunt Martha
- a television from Martin 

- tools for my spinning wheel from Margaret, Hunter, and my father

In my kitchen

- circra 1970 Oster stand mixer from Mary (and her mother before her)

- that lovely oak-lef mug from Mark 

- cookbooks Rachel and Jenn

- one teapot from Lennon, and another from my mother (I drink a lot of tea)

- tea from Eric, Nathaniel, Shannon, Martin, Rachel

- spices from Jenn and Grant

- wind chimes from my mother and aunt Lanette 

- handmade ceramic bowl and mug made by Mari 

- spatula from Eric

- my grandmother's cast-iron skillet

- my great-grandmother's bread board 

- an enormous bottle of Mexican vanilla from Jon and Steph 

- pear butter from Amy

Finally, if you open my cabinets, you will find a set of matching dishes (an amazing yard-sale find, in exactly the pattern I wanted) from my mother.

I could make this list much longer, but I hope it is already clear that I have many reasons to be grateful, and not one good reason to covet anyone’s registry.  

I wish I could give you all friends as attentive and generous as my own. I hope that I am half as generous as they. However, I can encourage myself and you to be such friends.  Watch, listen, look for something small and essential you can give a friend.  Be old-fashioned. Pray over it. Don't make them wait for a wedding registry. 

What everyday things do you have that have been gifts or hand-me-downs? For those who are married, what were the most meaningful/useful gifts you received? 

Making it Home: A Place We Bless

In Garden State, one of the characters say, regarding the idea of home, “Maybe that’s all family really is: a group of people that miss the same imaginary place.”  The name of that “imaginary place,” it seemed, was “home.” When I was twenty, this line resonated with me, and for a time I considered “home” an impossible concept, a site of perpetual deferment, the place I wanted-to-be-but-was-not. At twenty-six, I have far less patience for that kind of angst.  

Of course I still experience disorientation, longing, dissatisfaction, anger, and all the feelings associated with my twenty-year-old confusion. In fact, in many ways my life is far lonelier than it was at twenty, and my idea of “home” is certainly more complicated. At the same time, cynicism has lost its adolescent charm, and I am increasingly determined to fight against disillusionment.  

Are our ideas of home imaginary?  In many ways, yes, though “imagined,” or “imaginative” would please me better. Regardless, I have no shame about committing myself to an imaginary place. In fact, I’ve been inhabiting imaginary worlds my whole life. As a child, I knew my Narnian geography quite well, but couldn’t tell you which street in my hometown led to the grocery store. As a teenager, I decided the world was ugly, and that I preferred to dwell among less trodden ways: poetry, novels, and daydreams. But those were childish ways, and I began to put them aside when I realized a funny thing about being human: we have a habit of imagining things, and then making them real in the material world. We see through a glass darkly, but for all our dim-sightedness, we have strong hands.  

When we are children, our parents, teachers, and others are usually responsible for creating the places and relationships in which we feel “at home.” As adults, not only do many of us leave home (physically and relationally) , we discover that we are now largely responsible for creating our homes. 

I think that it is in the recognition of this responsibility (or the failure to recognize it) that much of the disorientation of young adulthood arrives. 

Especially during my first year of living on my own, the fact that I had complete control over my living space and time was exciting, but it also contributed to my sense of homelessness.  Home was no longer a place with familiar dishes in the cupboard or familiar faces around the table; now it was a place with a certain smell or a set of household customs.  

Once I realized that I was building a home for myself, this freedom became more joyful.  I began making daily resolutions about how my home would operate--everything from how often I would bake bread to how I would spend my money.  One day, when a friend visited my apartment for the first time, she said, “I forgot your apartment number, but then I saw that only one place had the windows open, and I knew that had to be yours.”  At that moment, I realized that I had, indeed, made this particular place home--so much so that even outsiders recognized it as mine. 

In these “Making it Home” posts, I want to discuss the particular, practical ways we can build and sustain our homes. Each post will attempt to demonstrate something about home. Today’s theme, for example, is that home is a place we bless. 

One of the oldest meanings of “to bless” is to consecrate, to set apart, to hallow.  This setting apart is, I think, foundational to establishing a sense of home in a place or season. My apartment, for example, is different from my office or classroom.  Even though I do much of my work from my kitchen table, that kitchen is fundamentally different from my office. It is a place where I act, speak, and dress differently. A place where I cultivate different kinds of relationships, for example, than in my classroom.  It is a place I can both work and rest. 

In the same way, this city is now my home in a way that most other cities are not. I have set Waco apart, consecrating it as the place where I work, live, vote, invest time and energy, and look for ways to be involved in God’s kingdom. 

I did not wait until Waco felt like home before I began to bless it.  I cannot say that deciding that I would set Waco apart as my home immediately banished homesickness. It still took the better part of two years before I really felt at ease here. However, by deciding that I would intentionally cultivate my life here--rather than simply enduring it for the time my degree program lasted--hastened the feeling of being at home.  

So how do we bless something?  Although I treasure the tradition of extempore, sincere and individual prayers of my Baptist upbringing, I often find deep veins of wisdom in the blessings and prayers others have written to set aside certain places as “home.” 

When I was in seventh or eighth grade, my mother gave me a little book called Praying with the Celts, selected by G.R.D. McLean (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988).  I was fascinated by these prayers, which very specifically offered blessings for houses, beds, fires, and kinships. One, entitled “House Blessing,” prays

“God bless the house from ground to stay,

From beam to wall and all the way,

From head to post, from ridge to clay,

From balk to roof-tree let it lay,

From found to top and every day

God bless both fore and aft, I pray,

Nor from the house God’s blessing stray,

From top to toe the blessing go. (105)

I could imagine a young family standing in front of their new cottage, running their hands over the beams and walls as they offered this blessing. I could imagine, in that moment, the structure becoming home for them. 

The Celts seem to be particularly good at blessings of this sort, and I was delighted last year to discover a much larger collection, published in 1900 by Alexander Carmichael, entitled Carmina Gadelica.  This collection offered even more specific blessings, often tailored to the specific kinds of activities happening within the home: setting up a loom to weave cloth , bathing children, sleeping, starting a fire, and many more.  

The example of these marvelously particular Celts has inspired me to be more intentional in the ways I bless my home and the work I do in the places I call home.  For example, I try to begin all my academic work with this  rich prayer by St. Thomas Aquinas.  I pray for bread as I am kneading, collard greens as I am planting them, tea as I am drinking it. Maybe that’s silly, but those prayers remind me that I home is not a place I can wait for someone else to build for me. Other people are important. Community is crucial. Church--in good and bad ways--complicates all of this. But it is both my responsibility and privilege to create a home for myself (and, I hope, for others) by consecrating places and days.  

I think that realizing one’s own role in home-making actually heightens the creativity and courage needed to help others feel at home in their own lives.  I have already discussed the ways in which churches both succeed and fail in their duty to celebrate the important seasons in the lives of young adults, including those outside the traditional categories of celebration (marriage, parenthood, and ordination/commissioning). The same day I posted the second of those notes, I learned that The Simple Way community, in cooperation with many other faithful, creative people, will soon release a book that attempts to guide the church into some of these needed blessings. Shane Claiborne, a founding member of The Simple Way, was the first person I ever heard speak against “the loneliness of our culture’s vision of adulthood.”  From what I've seen, this book promises to continue their fight against that lonely vision.  Entitled Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals,  the book is available for pre-order here, but until it is realeased, you can read the Introduction and several of the prayers here. In addition to prayers for certain days or seasons, this collection has a number of prayers that reveal a deep and thoughtful commitment to blessing all kinds of places and seasons, including the bedroom of a single adult, an adoption, and even the furnace of a house. 

Home is a place we bless. The places and times we bless become home.  

 What time or place in your life would you like to bless? Do you have a certain prayer or blessing you use to consecrate your home(s)?  If you use or create a prayer, please post it here! 

What are the implications of these questions for the idea of “church”? Is the church also an imaginary place?

Making it Home: Musical Edition

As George MacDonald says, “ […] home, as you may or may not know, is the only place where you can go out and in” (Lilith, Ch 1). As my other posts and your comments have already suggested,  “home” can mean a particular place, a season of life, a relationship, a church, and often all those things at once. The journeys into and away from those places, times, relationships can be both joyful and disorienting.  With those meanings of home--and the journeys associated with them--in mind, I started a playlist several years ago entitled “For the Journey Home.” It is filled with songs that speak in some way to the experiences related to home--feeling away from home (or journeying toward home), being at home, and leaving home. 

I have much more to say about home in the coming weeks and months, but for now, I’d rather listen. I hope you’ll listen with me. 

* Feeling away from Home / Journeying toward Home

"Homeward Bound" by Simon and Garfunkel



"Heimweh" (Homesickness) by Edvard Grieg




"Much Farther to Go" by Rosie Thomas


* Feeling at Home




"This is Home" by Switchfoot (one of the few good things to come from the film version of Prince Caspian!)



"The Lakes of Canada" by The Innocence Mission


* Leaving Home



"The Trees of the Field" (This is the song my church sang for me on my last Sunday before leaving for college)




"The Trees of the Field" by Sufjan Stevens (Inspired by the same passage, Isaiah 55, as the song above).

Question: What are your favorite songs about being away from home, enjoying home, or leaving home? Post a link or description below!