Home is where your heart is. You’ve probably heard that statement before. Maybe you’ve experienced it in your life, also. Home is a special place. A place to feel safe, to feel loved. Or just a place where you can be completely yourself and relax in your leggings and sweatshirt.

For many, the word home can trigger a picture in their minds of a building. A cozy place with windows and steps that lead up to the front door. Maybe there’s a chimney with smoke curling slowly from the top. Perhaps there is a stone pathway to the front porch. A lamp sitting in the window casts a soft beam of light outside. There’s a dog sleeping on the front lawn. Does any of this sound like your home?

Or maybe the word home for you brings different thoughts to mind. Perhaps you think of someone you love, or many people that you love. Being with them makes you feel warm and comfortable and safe. Home is anywhere that they are, no matter if you are living in an apartment in New York City, or a ranch home in Texas.

For me, my meaning of home has changed drastically over the past year. For most of my life, home meant being with my family, living in an area of the country that I absolutely loved. I was surrounded by land that I knew almost as well as I knew my family—in fact, it was kind of like a member of my family. There were spots that I would escape to when I was sad or lonely. Places where I could go to to explore God’s creation. I knew all of my surrounding areas to shop, to find good restaurants and places to relax.

After I got married, though, my definition of home has changed. Now my home is wherever my husband and kitty are. My surroundings are different, as I live in a different kind of country. Instead of my familiar woods, I live in farmland. I live closer to highways and big cities. In many ways, I feel like I’ve left my real home, where I grew up, behind. And there are many days when I feel homesick.

For Christians, our real home is yet to be seen. Because one day, we will live with Christ forever in Heaven. Funny though, I don’t think of Heaven nearly as much as I think about my childhood home. I don’t feel homesick for Heaven the way that I feel homesick for the place where I grew up. Maybe it’s hard to feel homesick for a place that I’ve never seen. But it’s a place that we should long for. It’s a place that we can only imagine how wonderful it is. It’s the home that we should be excited to move to one day.

When you start thinking of your home, do you think of Heaven?