Living in Exile & Longing for Home

The week my baby brother was born sent me into exile: a foreign territory where I was clearly not at home. 

My little brother arrived in mid autumn, which for Kansas wheat farmers is prime sowing season and for tax accountants, is extended tax filing season. My father was both. So while my older siblings attended school that week, Dad was left with a preschooler as Mom was in the hospital recovering.

I ended up at my aunt’s house. My aunt was mother to six and although my mother’s sister, she had a very different parenting style. The first night in their home, as I silently picked through tear-soaked food I didn’t recognize, my aunt sent me to bed early with harsh words and a few hunger pangs.

A couple days into my stay, my dad called. I urgently whispered into my aunt’s landline that I wanted to come home. He explained that he was on the tractor all day and there was no one at home to stay with me. I begged, promising to sit on the tractor next to him without a word. He didn’t fall for it. 

I felt abandoned in enemy territory. 

And worst of all, it was AFTER pleading to my father for rescue.

DETOUR OR EXILE?

I’ve spent a lot of time writing and talking about detours, but maybe what many of us are actually facing is more like an exile. If the diagnosis was the detour, living with it the rest of your life is the exile. If the accident call or divorce paper was the detour, living without them the rest of your life is the exile.  Maybe the detour is the verb (what happened), while exile is the noun (where you find yourself now).

When we told my son (our middle child) we were having another child, that he would no longer be the baby of the family, that three-year-old said: “You’re really messing me up.” That was the detour for him, but exile was having a younger sib forever. Just like me with my little brother.

But I have a more recent exile.

Illness, in so many of its forms, is a kind of exile. It dislocates. It estranges you from your body, from your story, from your community—sometimes even from God.

– John Swinton

My upcoming birthday has prompted me to do a little math: I was shocked to realize that nearly 25% of my adult life I’ve been chronically ill. And that percentage will increase the longer I live.

Anyone who lives with it (personally or as a caregiver) knows: ongoing illness forces us into unfamiliar territory—an alien world where medical appointments replace social gatherings, energy rationing overrules spontaneous plans, and physical and emotional separation isolate us from our previous community. We speak a new—often misunderstood—vocabulary of symptoms, treatments, and limitations. We grapple with an identity crisis, mourning our previous healthy self, and contemplating who we are when stripped of our former abilities and roles.

Chronic illness is exile, but it’s not the only exile.

THE MOST FAMOUS EXILE

For Christians and Jews, the word “exile” likely brings to mind the 70 years the Israelites spent in Babylon after their forced removal from Jerusalem.

Psalm 137 expresses the pain felt by the Israelites during this exile:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Zion.

Psalm 137:1, ESV

This story is so important in Scripture because many of us have parallel experiences: sudden displacement from our familiar life, a longing for “how things used to be,” learning to live in an unwelcome place, and maybe mostly, questions about God’s presence in our suffering. 

The prophet Jeremiah wrote this to those in exile:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11, NIV

 

The spring following my diagnosis, as I struggled daily just to survive, graduation invitations from my daughter’s high school classmates with this verse flooded our mailbox and I doubted—at least for myself—if those words were true.

LIVING IN EXILE

Exile refined and deepened Israel’s faith. The Israelites maintained their identity while adapting to Babylon. But that adapting couldn’t have been easy.

In exile, it is so easy to shut down, to miss out on life because it no longer feels familiar.

A few verses before the graduation verse, Jeremiah wrote in 29:4-7, about how to live in exile: Build houses, plant gardens, get married, have children, continue life, seek the welfare of the community… Don’t waste this time; get on with living…

In the context of chronic illness, I’ve found that advice to be sound. From my journal:

I have spent almost a decade looking for the exit door to my heart failure. I am embarrassed and surprised to see that, despite my desire to leave this space, I’ve built a  meaningful life within its new boundaries. Though I have often done it under protest, I’ve cultivated some valuable bounty in this new soil. I’ve been able to contribute to my community in new ways, to connect in this foreign land and find purpose, even without a rescue. At least without the rescue I had envisioned.

UNEXPECTED GIFTS IN THE WILDERNESS

Exile has rewritten expectations for both my spiritual heart and my physical heart.

For my spiritual heart, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of suffering in others, discovered authentic relationships, and a clarity about what truly matters.

Mainly, the difference between optimism and hope has become clear. Over the many years of people praying for my heart to heal, I found myself covering for God with an optimism I didn’t feel. But that made me realize I actually had a strong hope all along that went deeper than feeling.  Optimism is passive and passing, hope is active and eternal. It’s the difference between, “Don’t worry, this will all be over soon,” versus seeking a deep peace no matter how long it lasts—a hope without false promises.

Shalom is about getting to a place where we know this:

Your pain is real, but so is your hope.

Your pain is real, but so is your hope.

Maybe what’s taken you far from home isn’t physical illness but rather family pain or some other deep loss or disappointment. Exile can take any number of paths. The harsh meantime of exile is a tough stretch of life to navigate. Often because it feels like we are just spinning our wheels, marking days off the calendar, waiting to go home. But that is where the Spirit has opportunity to draw near.

Outside of their homeland, the children of Israel felt separated from God in their exile, but that has never been the case.

Here’s what th e long story of Scripture tells us:

Exile isn’t the end. It’s in between. It’s the middle chapters. It’s where not only hope, but home becomes clear.

The story of chronic illness includes lots of those middle chapters. And honestly, I’m still struggling to want more than a cure. As we all live between the already and the not yet, between Eden and Eternity, between His promise and His fulfillment, we can look forward to more than healing or resolutions, more than answers or restoration, more than cures or reasons. We can instead look for God’s shalom, and a spiritual homecoming in God’s presence. This is truly finding Home.

IS HOME A PLACE?

Maybe most importantly, exile has shifted my understanding of home. Exile has redefined home: Moving from a place-based to a presence-based understanding.

After losing both parents in less than four months, we sold their house and business. It felt like home was gone. But as I cling to my memories, it hasn’t taken long to realize it wasn’t. Home became less about where my body could go and more about where my soul could rest and find His shalom. That grown-up little brother of mine has been a big source of my shalom.

Home became less about where my body could go and more about where my soul could rest and find His shalom.

When I think back to that phone call from my dad to my aunt’s house, I realize now that I was never abandoned. Exile has taught me the difference between being lost and being found in an unfamiliar place. And most importantly, God’s presence doesn’t prevent the journey to Babylon, but His Spirit promises to meet us there.

As all of us carrying both the pain of displacement and the gifts of the journey know: He never sends us anywhere alone.

As I sat on my borrowed bed at my aunt’s that teary evening, I found something that let me grasp hope to survive the week. Dad had tucked my favorite stuffed bear into my little bag. And I noticed a rare note under that bear’s arm with familiar scribbly cursive: Have fun. See you soon. Love and hugs, Dad

Listen to this post read by the author HERE.