3/12: You Can Never Go Home Again

Last weekend, I took a much-needed break from my routine and drove to Houston for some sightseeing, window shopping, and what Houston is perhaps best known for: eating.

Although Houston is my hometown, I haven’t lived there since 1996, when my dad moved our family to Boise, Idaho. (It was a culture shock, to say the least.) Every time I come back to Houston, I have to visit something nostalgic: the house I grew up in; the junior high I went to. This trip, I saw the first house I remember in southwest Houston, and, for the first time since moving away back in the ‘90s, I went inside the church we went to for years.

This church isn’t any run-of-the-mill neighborhood chapel: it’s a southern Baptist megachurch, and one of the first of the trend. Growing up, it seemed enormous: the sanctuary holds a few thousand people, and the complex has a huge athletic center (called the ‘Christian Life Center’ back then) complete with racquetball courts, bowling lanes, and multiple basketball courts.

I didn’t like going to church there. It was far where we lived in northwest Houston, and having to get up early every Sunday to make the drive was a chore. I remember wanting desperately to fit in with the other kids in Sunday school, at church camp, and other church-related activities, but I never did make any close friends there.

When I was in maybe third grade, I was in Vacation Bible School for a week during the summer. Another kid in the group taunted me because I was fat, and the adults in charge did nothing. Even as a kid, I could sense that the people there were more concerned about image and the church than they were about the inclusion and well-being of its members. And now that the cracks are showing within the Southern Baptist Convention, one can only hope that real change is coming for the church.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Before I walked into that church again after 25 years, I was worried it might trigger old memories and I’d regret ever having gone back. Although the carpet had been replaced, coffee machines were added for visitors to enjoy, and the athletic center had been updated, it all looked the same to me, except… smaller.

The hallways were less wide; the spaces I always perceived as gigantic were suddenly average-size. A place that had seemed so imposing and all-encompassing to me as a kid; a building that had advertised itself as the church and, as such, was the only church that was acceptable to attend, was just that: a building.

It’s funny how time and distance make things smaller than they were growing up.

Houston is where I grew up; it’s my frame of reference for many firsts in my life. But it’s not home anymore, and it hasn’t felt like home in a long time. I’ve had multiple “homes” since leaving Houston, and each of those places felt like home for a time. But things change, circumstances shift, we evolve, and it’s time to move on.

Austin is home, but it amy not be home forever. I’m open to experiences and possibilities in other places, and to the idea of “home” shifting over time.

If “home” is where the heart is, then that’s where I want to be.