The funny thing about ‘home’ is that sometimes it takes moving away from it to discover what it really is.
Home can be a physical place— an address on a map or the place you keep your toothbrush. But it can also be a word that encapsulates your deepest longings: to be known, to belong, to wear oversized sweatpants after eight p.m.
If home is another name for belonging, then surely there’s an undercurrent of homesickness churning within us all. You might move away from a geographical home and reestablish it in career, in hobbies, in friends that become family. Or you might stay in your hometown for a lifetime and still feel detached somehow, estranged from a sense of belonging even when you can’t go to the grocery store without seeing a familiar face.
Whether you are one of the ones who goes or one of the ones who stays, the impermanence of home tends to be one of life’s most recurring surprises. Where do we go to be known? Is it possible to build a permanent sense of home in a transient lifestyle? And if home is where the heart is, what can we love that will quiet the restlessness within?
In Almost There, Bekah DiFelice shares her story of moving as a military spouse and discovering elements of home in the most unexpected places. She offers wisdom and encouragement to those who struggle with a search for belonging in aworld where home is constantly shifting.
Although restlessness lurks in every location, Bekah uses imaginative storytelling and witty, relatable prose to lean into the promise that God offers a home that resides in the privacy of our hearts. One that is transportable, immovable.
And when our hope of home is rooted in an unchangeable God, we are not uprooted, lost, or made homeless by change. We are found ones on the move.
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Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review
“Military spouse DiFelice writes eloquently about the many difficulties and benefits of moving one’s home from place to place. DiFelice, a former marathon runner, draws frequently on an attitude of endurance and “pushing through the pain” to make the most of wherever she and her Marine husband are stationed. She shares how emotions can become more volatile at the most unexpected times and the ways her poignant memories of family, friends, and key life moments meld together with a sense of loneliness each time she reaches an unfamiliar city. DiFelice is particularly touching when she recalls the Sunday afternoon shopping excursions with her mother and sister that have become fewer and fewer due to how far apart they live. Instead of wallowing in her sorrow, DiFelice calls them every Sunday so she can join with them as they walk. For DiFelice, everyone who longs for a place to call home must make (and keep making) definitive, intentional decisions to create their own haven. This book will appeal broadly to those who have lived a wandering existence, and Christian readers in particular will appreciate DiFelice’s tangents on the lives of biblical characters, which round out this fascinating take on life’s unexpected twists and turns.”