Home is where the heart is, or so the old adage goes. But that doesn’t accurately encompass the complexities of military life. My children and my husband are my heart, and they’re here with me, but Colorado doesn’t feel like home yet. So when does a place feel like home and not just a place you live? I recently posed the question on my Facebook page confident that my military connections would have the answer. Responses included:

When you can get to the grocery store without navigation

When you make real/genuine friendships

When you feel comfortable in the area

When you’re involved in the community (both an answer and a suggestion)

I don’t know, this place [current duty station] still doesn’t feel like home.

The overwhelming majority said 1-2 years, with an emphasis on the 2 year mark. The time frame seems accurate, but that’s a long time watching the weeks and months tick by, waiting for home to show up.

The beginning of my husband’s Army career saw us moving every two years or less. No place felt like home, so it was easy to leave. There were friendships that broke my heart to walk away from, but those were already under the PCS (permanent change of station) ticking time clock— neither of us would stay and someone had to go first.

Virginia was different. Like formative years are shaped by a childhood home, Virginia Beach molded my early years of motherhood and true adulthood. We had the privilege of living there over 6 years, which in my husband’s field is almost unheard of. All of my babies were born in Virginia, or in Wonder Woman’s case brought to our home there.  God used our time at the Beach to change me in ways I could never have imagined. Consequently, Virginia became my home and won my heart in a way that I hadn’t thought possible.

Had someone asked me the ‘home’ question before my most recent move, my seasoned military wife response would have been “home is where you make it,” forgetting that the making takes so much time.

It takes time to create a friendship with mutual give and take, free of guilt from needing help. It takes time to truly connect beyond the acquaintance stage of casual hellos, small talk, and praying you correctly remembered their name. It takes time to find people you can be yourself around- no makeup, awkward sense of humor, and weirdness on full display.

So I guess home is where the heart is, the heart is just a slow mover. It doesn’t get packed up in a box by the movers, mixed with packing paper and clutter for you to dig out at your next location. Part of it travels with you, loaded up with the kids and dogs and 2 weeks worth of clothes and essentials. The other part gets left behind with the people who stayed. The ones who walked hand in hand through the complicated stuff, passed tissues during the sad stuff, and laughed through all the good ones.

There is a sense of loneliness, of grieving, as the heart recognizes it is missing pieces and longs for them to reunite. Yet slowly, with time, the heart begins to heal. Friendships emerge and begin building cells which grow and form tissue and arteries that get life pumping again.

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:19

I trust that one day my home and my heart will be in the same location, in another 6 months to a year it appears. Until then, and maybe always, my heart is a dual resident of Virginia and Colorado.