Sometime between the age of 19 and 21 I decided I must have left home.
I still spent my holidays from University in my parents' house, sleeping in the 'my' room surrounded by the trinkets I'd collected as a teenager but in my head I thought I was grown up now and must have at some point 'left home'. It came as quite a shock to my Mum when I mentioned it once!
I remember especially throwing myself into the church I was attending at university which I thought should be my new home church but actually, I was always just a student who everyone knew was only there term time and would leave once the three or four years were up.
Then I met and got engaged to the wonderful, charming and gorgeous Johnny Gilchrist and I was totally blown away by the way my 'childhood' church of Rugby Christian Fellowship embraced him and me back into the family of RCF. When we went on mission they supported us as a church and many individuals within did as well. Of all the people who reply most to my emails and prayer requests, it's the members of my home church who watched me grow up from an enthusiastic child to a sulky teenager and a big headed young adult. These are the people who have been our biggest champions and prayer supporters through the years of living by faith with YWAM and then as missionaries (as we saw it) to our new-home town in New Zealand. (I have a sneaking suspicion some of the people in Tauranga will also join this group of Biggest and Best Long-Distance Supporters)
Every time we have visited home they have cared about our lives as if it were a part of their own.
I have come to believe that you can never really leave home if the people at home still love you.
This is just a shout out to all the young people searching to make their own way in the world - don't think you need to leave the people of your childhood behind you just because you are now grown up. It is the people who have watched you grow that will stick by you through good times and bad and care about you no matter what you do, because they know who you really are. If they still love you after that, they always will!
A Big, Big Thank you to the people and Pastor of RCF.
