Longing for we know not what

Things are not as they are meant to be.

How well we know that...

You know that feeling of being hungry, but not knowing what for? When you open each kitchen cupboard in turn, stare at the contents and then close it before moving onto the next. Then, after repeating the routine at least three times, you settle on something that you don’t really want and that definitely doesn’t satisfy.

That feeling of homesickness when you can’t define the home that you are sick for.

That feeling of knowing you’re missing something, even though you have no idea what that something is.

Last week, I went back to Durham, where I lived for a year before leaving in September. I had anticipated some mixed feelings, but I wasn't prepared for how I actually felt as I walked through the streets. I started to feel really uncomfortable. At least, I think that’s how to describe the feeling. It wasn’t sadness, wasn’t fear, it wasn’t loss or regret. All I knew was that it didn’t feel good. I was surrounded by buildings and paths that were familiar, so familiar, but it felt like I wasn’t a part of it and maybe never had been.

Having moved from New Zealand to England to Northern Ireland in the last year and a half, I’m not quite sure where 'home' is, but I’ve come to realise that maybe none of those places are home, not really. Because if I’m honest, I think I always feel just that little bit homesick.

CS Lewis used the German word “sehnsucht” to explain this feeling. He defined sehnsucht as “an inconsolable longing for we know not what”. For me, this word defines what feels indefinable. It defines the feeling I get when I’m looking at a wide open sea, when I’m listening to Foy Vance sing “Guiding Light”, when I laugh till my tummy aches, when I read CS Lewis’s descriptions of Narnia, when I make a list of all the places I want to visit in the world, when I look at the photo albums I made after coming home from South Africa. Moments of beauty or inspiration or sadness or wistfulness, moments that stir up an incredible longing that seems impossible to satisfy. Sometimes, I'm pretty good at trying to satisfy the longing, but it always comes back, usually because I try to satisfy it with finite and imperfect things.

Perhaps the answer to the longing is that, for now, there is no answer. Another quote from CS Lewis: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” Maybe we can’t find real, true home here, because home is not here. Perhaps those moments of longing are really moments of insight into what we’re missing. We are made for Heaven and something deep inside us knows it, longs for it, even when we can’t define what it is we’re longing for. Our homesickness is not for a home that is found in this world. It is for a home greater, more glorious, more perfect than even these glimpses can suggest.

My wish is that knowing that will give you hope in those moments of longing.

#sehnsucht