Home is where the heart is, or so they say. And though we may determine where we live—in what city or what house—where we find our hearts and therefore our homes is often a much bigger mystery.
We found All Saints in its pre-launch team days, in the summer of 2005, when it was a small group with a big dream for a church serving the people of Durham and Chapel Hill. The passionate mission to love God and His people and the close familial relationship among these folks was catching, and it didn’t take much to convince us that we wanted to be a part of what God was doing through them. God was moving in big ways in this little group: the preaching was powerful and instructive, the worship was soul-full and reverent, and the fellowship was true and deep. So along with our nearly two-year-old son Luke and our soon-to-be-born daughter, we jumped in to the work that was already well underway. Little did we know that God was preparing a home for our family in this very group of people that would in fact be where we would find our hearts.
In January 2006, our second child, Eliza, and All Saints’s first baby was born. In August 2006, Eliza was the first baby in the church’s family to be baptized; in December 2008, she was our church’s first death. All through her nearly three year story, from day one of her medically fragile and exceedingly complicated life all the way to the last day she spent here on earth, Eliza was surrounded by a very big family. Even as God had been preparing a church for Durham and Chapel Hill, He had been growing a home for our family and making room in the hearts of the people He was calling together for this little girl. We found among these people we had known only a matter of months countless surrogate mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, ready and willing to stand in for us and with our children day or night when our biological family couldn’t be there with us. We found medical professionals willing to come alongside us as knowledgeable friends in difficult moments and as respite-givers when we were overwhelmed, chefs eager to feed us endlessly as our world was turned upside down, neighbors near and far willing to do everything from helping raise our son to cleaning our house to sitting with us in our grief.
But All Saints wasn’t a home for us just because of our fragile daughter. Our son Luke found his heart at this church, too, as he has been nurtured and loved on by excellent and caring pastors and children’s ministry volunteers, by friends who have become as close as family. And we found our hearts as we joined in the work being done in women’s and men’s ministries, in pastoral care and in children’s ministry, in set up and moving and faith formation and welcoming new families. Somewhere along the way, this church whose worship met our souls, whose teaching fed our minds, and whose people loved our family became so much more than a church: it became our home.
We are built, as children of God, to long for Home, that eternal, true Home that scripture promises awaits us. And even as a church provides space for us to intensify that longing, to learn about it and yearn for it together, it can also provide a foretaste of it here on earth. If home is where your heart is, then God has no doubt provided that space for our family’s hearts here at All Saints.
