Homesick

“The shape of that ache for another time and place is the imprint of eternity on our souls.” - Douglas Kaine McKelvey, Every Moment Holy Volume I

---

I get a tight feeling of dread when I hear sirens go by. I get wet blanket feelings of regret when I lay in bed at night. I get sinking feelings of shame when I think of all the ways which I’ve failed in life. I find defensive fear lurking in all the nooks and crannies of my soul. Dread, regret, pain, fear, guilt, shame. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right. It is an imposter darkness trying to implant on the walls of my ardent heart. I want it out of my body. But why?

It is because I am a stranger in this imperfect world. I am not created for darkness. I am not accustomed to badness. From a perfect place I came, and to a perfect place I will return. But for now, I am still on the dynamic road to eternity, on which there are many peaks and valleys.

The lovely views I take in on this road in no way compare to the beauty I will see when I arrive at my destination. But they are a suggestive forgery of the glory that I know deeply in my soul exists at the end of the route. Thank goodness I know this life isn’t the main course. This is only the appetizer.

Divine Romance

God gets our attention in a lot of ways on this earth. In the beauty of flowers, the taste of blackberry cobbler, the aroma of coffee, the smell of summer nights, the feeling of kissing, the warmth of laughter, the comfort of loved ones. There is a common theme among these pleasures: goodness. Goodness can only come from God. God doesn’t give us good things with the intention that we fall in love with the earth, but rather that we would recognize their origin, so we might fall more in love with Him.

Sometimes it seems the good things in life couldn’t be more beautiful. They leave us breathless, awestruck, sentimental, wistful. But these things on earth are nowhere near the height of glory that will be revealed in eternal life. Even the most majestic snow-covered mountaintop is only a preview of what is in store, a mere glimpse into a life that our souls will one day truly and fully experience.

God has hidden for us on this earth, little easter eggs of beauty – the vigor of waterfalls, the glory of sunsets, the promise of rainbows – so as to say: “just wait until you see what I have prepared for you.” There is another word for these easter eggs that make us feel so romanced, so found, so deeply in touch with our destiny: sehnsucht.

Sehnsucht

“Sehnsucht” is a German word meaning longing, desire, craving, yearning, or wistfulness. A quick Google search says psychologists use the word to represent thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences.

Sehnsucht can be used to describe an unexplainable feeling of homesickness even though you are sitting on your couch in your bunny slippers, the burning desire to return to a place you’ve never even been and don't even think you know of, or the warm feeling of remembering something that has never even happened to you. It can be an overwhelm of beauty that stands you still in time, a fleeting observation that whisks you back to feelings of childhood, or into a mental realm that feels almost magical. It is as familiar and evasive as a dream from which you just awoke.

Sehnsucht is a sensation that comes to us in brief moments, when we experience life in great, reminiscent detail. It comes as evasively but surely as a sweet smell drifting in on a mild summer breeze. It can come with the twinkling of back country stars, a night getting ice cream with old friends, a drive through your hometown, or fireflies and cigar smoke on a hot summer night. It is characterized by an overwhelming of rightness - an ache of nostalgia - a yearning to get back to some vague, unidentifiable memory. It breaks your heart for what once was or what never has been – you can’t decide. It is a feeling you later wish you could bottle, but also can't even tell for certain if it was ever real.

C. S. Lewis describes it as: “The inconsolable longing in the heart for we know not what …That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.”

But as delightful moments like these can wash over us with painstaking sentiment, I believe we can also experience sehnsucht when we are regretfully reminded of our imperfect humanity.

Seeking Perfection

We all wish we could be perfect. We do not want to mess up. We do not want to be seen as unrighteous or bad. We grieve over failure and obsess over criticism. Why can’t we disconnect with the idea of being perfect? Why do we have such a deep desire for purpose? What prevents us from resigning to our naturally occurring failure?

Our souls are not accustomed to imperfection. They are not built for a fallen world. Yet we live in a world where brokenness prevails. We are eternal souls trying to survive as we swim through a sea of wrongness. Goodness feels unnatural. Yet failure feels miserable and badness feels wrong. We are confused by how much we seek righteousness, yet how unattainable it feels. Fallenness goes against our wiring, yet it is all we seem to be capable of. Our persistent inability to conquer our imperfection leaves us bruised, unfulfilled, and exhausted.

Sehnsucht is a Christian made with a hole in his heart, recognizing this world is not where he belongs, longing for fulfillment, longing for salvation, longing for Heaven. We long for the ideal existence. We strive to be perfect. We wish we could never fail in the life we have been called to live on this earth. We wish we could maintain perfect love and friendship with God. Yet over and over again we come up short, and it maddeningly goes against our true desires. We are broken.

It’s okay to reconcile with our human yearn for perfection and recognize why criticism sticks and stings like light on dark. The sweet fulfillment comes from permitting our good Lord to fill in our blanks in this temporary brokenness where we are unable to make ourselves whole. We were designed to thirst for perfect union with God, but our incapability is not the end of the story. We were designed with this thirst so we could rejoice in our neediness and celebrate our Heavenly Father’s willingness to quench us.

Using our Inadequacy

That wash of unwarranted nostalgia from a walk in the woods or the closing of a good book can feel frustratingly memorable still - like trying to recall a dream. But this unexplainable feeling doesn’t have to feel mysterious and unattainable. Instead, we just have to pinpoint what exactly we are longing for.

Even with the living water provided to us in this broken world, we still long for our eternity where we will be able to experience God without the interruption of our sinful nature. Because even looking to Jesus for fulfillment is something we cannot do perfectly while on this fallen earth (not that we shouldn’t strive for it). Being discomforted by our imperfection on this earth is a driving thing. It reminds us, not of our present incapability, but of our temporary existence, and our glorious eternity. Christ fills us perfectly now and always, but sehnsucht motivates us towards our eternity, where we will be able to experience this fulfillment perfectly.

So this bittersweet feeling of nostalgia is not us missing the past. It is us longing for the future. We are reminiscent for the future. We are craving not the blissful ignorance of our childhood, but the blissful existence our perfect eternity in union with God. We are sentimental not over our childhood backyard, but over the feeling of returning home to Heaven and to our Maker. We are homesick for Heaven. We need not look back to the past, which is so tempting to try to relive. We need only look toward the glorious future, which won’t even be comparable to a single feeling of joy we’ve ever felt on this earth.

Longing for Heaven

Sometimes when I experience sehnsucht, my natural reaction to the strange nostalgia is to feel sad or resigned, because it feels a lot like remembering. It is difficult to pin down, and it sneaks up out of the blue. It is also a concept that seems too bizarre to entertain. Being homesick for a place you've never been? But what I have to remember is that I am not missing my past. I am missing my future in Heaven. I am living in anticipation for the eternity that will be revealed to me in due time; the place I truly belong. I have been practicing replacing missing with hope, and life has begun making a lot more sense.

Whenever I see a beautiful sunset beach, and get an unwarranted pang of familiarity and longing, I know that is my soul yearning for the paradise I will find in Heaven. Sehnsucht. Whenever I walk through my neighborhood on a summer dusk, with yellow light glowing from each row of houses, and I feel bitterly nostalgic for no good reason, I know I am craving the innocence of childhood that will be restored to me in Heaven. Sehnsucht. Whenever I catch a stunning view on a country hillside, that feels so familiar I feel I must have been there before, I know I am longing for the community that will greet me in Heaven. Sehnsucht. Whenever I feel a deep wanderlust to see all the sights I could never possibly travel to, I know I am desiring the endless time I will have to marvel at God’s wonders in eternity. Sehnsucht. Whenever my feelings get bruised or my conscience plays an embarrassing moments highlight reel, I am reminded of restoration when pride and hurt are banished in Heaven. Sehnsucht.

There is no need to wallow longingly in memories – good or bad. There is no reason to get back to the past. For those who do not have a pleasant past, Heaven will reconstruct it. For those who look back fondly on their past, Heaven will up it one-hundredfold. Because for followers of Christ, the future holds the warmth of the past, the present, and the future combined. Eternity will be a timeless celebration, more sweet feeling than the happiest Christmas, the coziest bonfire, the loveliest first date, or the best smelling beaches.

I hope you don’t confuse my claim on this wondrous longing for eternity to excuse us from living bold Christian lives on this earth. It is not a replacement of strife for goodness, but an intensifier. I am an eternal soul passing through a land of brokenness on my way to a perfect eternity. In this land there are hints of Heaven to fill me with purpose for the work to be done for its kingdom before I can move on. It isn’t a comfortable journey, and I am faced with challenges to my fallen nature and yearning for my Heavenly home. These painstaking feelings of homesickness for Heaven and cringey reminders of my imperfections are what remind me to abide in Christ, but also what push me on toward the utopian eternity I was made for. This is sehnsucht.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“O my soul, have there not always been signs? O my soul, were we not born with hearts on fire? Before we were old enough even to know why songs and waves and starlight so stirred us, had we not already tiptoed to the edge of that vast sadness, bright and good, and felt ourselves somehow stricken with a sickness unto life? … And as we wait, this sacred, homesick sorrow works in us to cultivate a faith that knows one day, [God] will [fill]. That is the holy work of homesickness: to teach our hearts how lonely they have always been for God.” - Douglas Kaine McKelvey, Every Moment Holy Volume I

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." - Ecclesiastes 3:11

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” – Romans 8:18-25

“Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” - 2 Corinthians 5:2-4

“For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” – Romans 8:3-6

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” – Romans 7:15-25

#sehnsucht #homesickness #homesickforheaven #heaven #eternity #eternalbodies #christianliving #christianwriting #Christianlifestyle #christianblogger #christianarticle #christianity #christianwriter #sehnsuchtarticle #theology #blogartcile