Home.

Below the fluff of clouds the patchwork pattern begins. This is how I know I'm almost home.

"Home" has meant two places for the past two years---the place I'm flying toward now, a farm outside of Swea City, Iowa and also the one I've just left, a small brick house in an old neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee.

Home is often first where you're born. Your second home, I think, is the one you make.

My Memphis home is one I've lived in the for the longest amount of time since I left the little sky-blue house in Iowa, and my commitment to be a Memphian, to be at home in my little brick house in the city I love has taught me quite a bit.

We all know it's true, but I'll say it again: Commitment all about choice. It's usually one daring decision, one strike out into the unknown, one turning point with all the bells and whistles. After that, though, commitment is the less-often discussed daily choices: to stay, to be fully present, to decide to love the place and the people all over again. A friend once said, "Commitment doesn't mean being a sprinter; it's more than a marathon. Commitment requires faithful plodders." How unexciting! How true!

I have two years of choice under my belt, and, from this vantage point, commitment to this city and to the dear people I've met here is the hardest, best thing I've ever done. In the process, I've learned what I'm about, the deep-deep down kind, when push comes to shove. I've learned to love more deeply and more terrifyingly than ever before. I've learned to ask for help and to gratefully accept it, to be a student of the ones I love and of the city that shapes us all. Life is challenging, beautiful, and full, Dear Reader. There are heights and depths I never would have known if I hadn't chosen to make my home, time and time again.

Choose yours. Choose your home-place. Choose your people who will help you give your life away. Choose to invest your life in the beauty that is commitment and self-reliance. And whenever you've reached your wits' end (which, by the way, is sure to happen more than once and more often than you'd like), hear the voice of your Jesus saying, "Beloved, I committed first. You go nowhere alone."

Build a home, Friends.