My sister tells me that I don’t need to do “goodbye runs” on each of my 10 favourite running routes in Wellington. “It’s just excessive,” she says, and she’s probably right. I’m moving from my flat in Wellington to Auckland and my room is filled with boxes. It’s as good a time as any to think about home.

I had the gift of being raised in two very different countries, with a family that was very familiar with the complexity of belonging. When I moved back to Aotearoa from India in 2018, I didn’t know — although perhaps I hoped — that four years later I would find it so wrenching to leave a city I’d chosen to live in based on little more than an impression of sunshine and busyness.

I’ve reflected on how I’ve learned to be at home in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara. Above all, I think I’ve learned how to notice God’s abundance, and I’ve written about some of that in this column (which will be continuing this year, have no fear!). God’s abundance of attention, tending to small and beautiful details, works in ways that may be invisible to me but nonetheless shapes me profoundly. God’s abundance of beauty, the hills to lift my eyes to (and my feet), crooked and crinkly horizons. God’s abundance of rest, a peace and wholeness found only in God, a solid grace I can rely on. God’s abundance of relationships, the love and sparkle of finding people who will jump with me into the ocean in the middle of winter or support my zany ideas to have themed parties.

Forgive me here, for a little self-indulgence: the objects in my room are a reminder of how God provides. My wall is papered with postcards sent by friends. I pack books with long inscriptions from friends carefully into cardboard, and tidy mixing bowls that have made biscuits that I’ve shared. Reminders that in all my untidiness and late nights, prayers have been answered.

And how does this abundance connect to home? In this home, in this place, God has shown me how to exist in the trust that things will be provided when I need them, and that there is much that will surprise me. Maybe that is what it takes to make a home? To know that the goodness of God that has existed in one place does not run out, that it is something I can take with me, and then find anew.

I was rereading old journals recently and found some entries from when I first left home — moved away from my parents and started going on adventures without them. In my memory these are exciting, fun times, but in the journal I’d written about how anxious I’d been to go away, how much I longed to return to the places where I knew I was loved and wanted. I am wildly, profoundly grateful that home is no longer just that one place where I'd felt safe. Time and experience have developed a trust that being at home is not confined to one place which will disappear completely when I pack boxes to leave. Being at home can be created anew in a different place with other people. God is already there and given time and effort, I can belong wholly again.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 267 February 2022: 26