There's No Place Like Home

"There's no place like home.  There's no place like home.  There's no place like home."
-Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz

If you didn't recognize this quote right away please go watch The Wizard of Oz directly after reading this post.  You are seriously missing out on an incredible part of culture and you need to see!!!
Now that we have that out of the way I want to talk about home. There are many definitions of home in the dictionary, from a place where one lives to a place where elderly are cared for.  In all these definitions home is a physical place where a person or group of people resides.  My definition of home goes beyond a building.  Home is the place where our hearts find unconditional love and acceptance.  Home isn't just a house or building but is rather tied to a group of people that show us this love and acceptance.  
I personally have many homes.  There are so many places in this world that will always hold a piece of my heart and will always be places I consider home.  Delvin, Co. Westmeath in Ireland is a place I will always consider home.  Its where I spent a year of my life and formed bonds that molded the person I am today and will continually affect my life.  Even Panajachel, Guatemala is a place I consider home even though I was only there a week.  Part of my heart will always be with the people I met in that beautiful country.  The home I want to talk about tonight however is Laramie.
Laramie is the place I was born, the place I grew up, the place I made the best friends a girl could ask for.  Almost my whole family on my dad's side lives in Laramie.  I grew up with many cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents around, even an adopt-a-grandma as I affectionately call her.  I was always spending time playing with my cousins and learning from my grandparents.  I am so incredibly blessed that I was able to see my family all the time and have that growing up.  It is one of the things I am most grateful for in life. Because of my experience growing up I value family above pretty much everything else.  My family taught me about love and acceptance and set the tone for the rest of my life
When I got to college I found myself back in Laramie after a year of missionary work and to be honest I was a little nervous about being back home.  I was afraid everything would be different and I wouldn't fit in at home any more.  I should have know that if it is truly home you will always have a place there.  The place I found a new group of friends and an extended family was at St. Paul's Newman Center.  This parish welcoming me home with open arms and is the place I met the ladies of 1823 Garfield.  Part of the Newman's Center's ministry is to rent out houses behind the church to college students in the community.  My first senior year (yes I was one of those students who took a victory lap!) is when I found a home in one of these houses.   I lived in the house for women with 7 of the most amazing women I have met.  We also adopted a couple others that we called room mates even though they never lived in the house.  During my five years of college, and particularly the 2 years I lived in that house, I was able to build relationships with these women that I believe will last a lifetime.  We shared everything from joys to sorrows to failures to great successes.  

Some of my beautiful roommates!!!

1823 Garfield is my home but not because the house was anything special.  The house was actually nothing special at all, in fact one room mate and I often argued over whether the microwave was a death trap or vintage.  The reason that place is home is because we shared our hearts with one another and found unconditional love and acceptance in that house.  I consider those women sisters.  Our relationship is so much stronger than just friendship.  We are truly sisters with a connection that is rooted in our relationship with the Lord.  Faith and a love of the Lord helped 8 seemingly very different women build a family.  
Now that we are all graduated from college we have spread all over Wyoming and Colorado.  This does not mean we are not still a family and there for one another.  Our love of one another spreads across the states and we continue to bound together through faith and the Eucharistic.  We come together each week at the Eucharistic table and in our prayers as we hold one another up in prayer.  We still have a home with each other in our hearts.  The house is not what made the home.  I recently went back to the house and without the traces of my room mates it was just a house.  Out home is not tied to the house but rather to our love for one another.  As long as we continue to love one another and work to develop our relationships our hearts will always have a home, no matter how far apart we may be.
I have been blessed with so many places I can call home.  I pray for each one of you that you have places you call home.  To have a place where you are loved unconditionally is the greatest gift anyone of us can be given.  If you have not been blessed to have a place like this pray that God gives you a home because He will.  If you are blessed to have a place to call home continue to develop those relationships and build on those because home is the most important thing we can foster.