After living overseas for 16 years in four different countries, you come “home” to San Diego only to realize home isn’t quite home anymore.
You’ve been uprooted. Life moves on. People move on. The place may still be there, but the sense of belonging isn’t automatic.
Coming back doesn’t always mean feeling at home again. You can return to a city that once held your life and still feel unsettled. It makes you ask a harder question than “Where do I live now?”
Where am I actually rooted?
Roots aren’t necessarily found in places. They’re found in shared experiences and relationships with people.
Place still matters. So does culture. So does history. But none of those, by themselves, guarantee belonging. You can stand on familiar ground and still feel disconnected. You can be surrounded by what used to feel like home and realize something has shifted. The relationships you remember belong to people whose lives kept moving while yours moved somewhere else. You can love those people and that place without being able to pick up exactly where you left off.
That doesn’t make the old roots less real. But it means there are new ones to grow.
There’s something beautiful about communities rooted in Jesus. Something that goes beyond family ties, culture, or kinship alone.
Not because those things are small. They aren’t. Family, culture, and shared history are gifts. But Jesus brings together people who might not otherwise find themselves sharing life. People with different backgrounds, different stories, and different ideas of what home means. They don’t have to become the same person to belong to one another. They’re learning to follow the same Lord.
The Greek word ekklesia means an assembly or gathering. In the New Testament, it’s used for the gathered people of God. We call it church. That word can carry a lot of weight, and sometimes a lot of baggage. We may hear it and picture a building, a service, or an organization.
But the people matter. People gathering around Jesus and learning to obey Him together.
When we choose to love God, love others, and make disciples together, something eternal happens. Bonds form that go beyond this lifetime. That’s the kind of belonging I’m talking about. It isn’t only the comfort of being around people who understand your past. It’s sharing a direction. Praying together. Helping one another obey what Jesus says. Learning to love people beyond the circle of those who already feel familiar.
There’s room in that community to be grateful for where you’ve been and honest about where you are. You don’t have to pretend the transition has been easy. And you don’t have to wait until a place feels like home before you start loving the people in it.
We’ve been in Texas—Dallas–Fort Worth—for about 15 months now. And we’re planting roots.
Not by pretending this has always been home. It hasn’t. Not by trying to recreate everything we loved about San Diego or our years overseas. Those places and relationships are part of our story. They always will be.
But there are people here to love, too. There is life to share here. There are disciples to make together.
Here in DFW, we’re calling it Sent Ones Church. A gathering of people rooted in Jesus, learning to love God, love others, and make disciples. Gathered together, but not gathered only for ourselves. Sent to others, even as we learn to belong to one another.
I don’t think planting roots means we’ll never move again. After years of life across cultures, I’m not sure I could make that promise. But I can be present here. We can give ourselves to the people God has placed around us now.
Home doesn’t have to mean going back to what was. It can mean becoming part of what God is doing where we are.
And slowly, it’s starting to feel like home.
