After the poem, feel free to scroll down and read the story of how it came to be. Hope you have a merry Christmas 🙏 Thanks for reading.
- Durgan
how could you leave
by Durgan Maxey
how could you leave your home? the only place you've ever known your family roots – the place you've grown how could you leave your home? tears of transformation – memories splashing as they fall my home is where I'm with You – not the curtains on the wall this world won't last forever home could never be this small so, how could you leave? you're home.
I just moved with my family to a new town. It’s a couple of hours away from where we grew up, where our babies were born, and where most of our blood-family lives.
Neither my wife nor I have ever lived in another area, so it was a big change. We both have way too much stuff that’s piled up over the years, so we’ve been forced to minimize. It’s a good thing.
One night, after a long day of packing, this poem hit all at once. I felt my own voice and other figurative voices in my head say – “How could you leave your home?” But the tone it came with felt more like, “How dare you leave?”
It reminded me of the battle in my mind before we left the church I worked in for almost ten years and had grown up in for almost thirty years.
“How could you leave the security of living near all your family? How could you leave the comfort of a beautiful, growing, financially successful area? How could you leave the people who love you and will miss you?
How could you leave your home?”
As I sat on the couch with my wife while she held our sleeping nine-month-old, I wrote out the poem as it came. Weeping, I finished writing as God reminded me home is not a building or a town. Home could never be that small.
So, I’m finding a new meaning of “home”.
A home that’s now with me, and a truer home to find in the end.
Shalom.
Durgan