Tag: Germany

There are seasons of life when you never quite unpack completely.

Even if the boxes are empty, part of you stays ready for the next change. You hesitate before putting too many holes in the wall. You postpone projects for “someday.” You tell yourself you’ll wait until the next place before buying the furniture you really want or planting roots that might have to be pulled up again.

You live there.

But you don’t quite expect to stay.

When our family first arrived in Germany as missionaries, that made perfect sense.

The first house we lived in was the mission house, generously provided through the support of others. Everyone knew it was temporary. It was a gift, and we were grateful for it, but no one expected it to be home forever.

Our second house was only around the corner. The church owned it, and we lived upstairs while the ground floor, originally intended to become a twenty-four-hour prayer room, instead became home to refugee families. It was there that neighborhood life began to take shape. The children downstairs adored the rabbits in the garden, even if they occasionally fed them things rabbits probably shouldn’t have eaten.

It was a good place.

But it still felt like part of a chapter that was being written one page at a time.

Then we moved again.

Not across the country.

Not even across town.

Just about a mile away.

This time, though, something was different.

The difference wasn’t the neighborhood. Much of our life remained exactly where it had been. Church was the same. Work was the same. Friends were the same.

The difference was quieter than that.

For the first time since arriving in Germany, we stepped into a house that wasn’t simply where we happened to be living.

It was where we began imagining a future.

Of course, life didn’t suddenly become perfect.

There were still responsibilities, disappointments, ordinary family disagreements, and all the small frustrations that come with everyday life. Refuge doesn’t erase those things.

Life became ordinary.

There were grocery trips and dinners around the table. School days. Church. Work. Weekends that arrived without carrying the weight of another transition. Our youngest daughter found her place at the after-school youth center, building friendships that became part of the rhythm of her life. One of my neighbors was also someone I worked with. The different parts of our lives no longer felt separate. They overlapped in the easy way they do when you’ve lived somewhere long enough for your world to knit itself together.

There wasn’t one grand moment when I announced to myself, We’re home now.

There was only the quiet accumulation of ordinary days.

Then, somewhere along the way, I realized something had changed.

Almost without noticing, we had stopped living as though we might have to leave.

For the first time in Germany, we were choosing to build our future there.

Looking back, I think that’s what transformed that house into a refuge.

It wasn’t the size of the rooms or the neighborhood or even the fact that it belonged to us.

It was the quiet confidence that tomorrow would begin in the same place as today.

It was the freedom to make plans without wondering whether another move lay just around the corner.

I used to think a refuge was a place where nothing difficult ever happened.

Now I think it’s something quieter than that.

A refuge is the place that gives you permission to stop living as though everything is temporary.

The place where, almost before you realize it, you finally exhale.