Homesickness 1 of 4 (Dr. Brent Lindquist)

Hello again.  Today we’re going to be dealing with a topic that is not a popular topic.  It has to do with homesickness.  Now, that’s probably something you don’t want to hear about because some of you have probably been dealing with homesickness, but I think there are some kernels of wisdom that we can draw out and use to help us from now on.

Where I live there’s a temporary Christian radio station that plays contemporary music and one group called Mercy Me has a song out right now that really hits me when I think about homesickness.  The title is Never Been More Homesick Than Now.  Now the singer is referring to the homesickness for the future, but I think the song relates very well to some of the homesickness that you and I that work where we don’t live, or didn’t grow up, experience.  This different kind of homesickness than maybe what the song meant will be very helpful for us as we look at both the homesickness for our past and home and also for the future.

There are a number of things about homesickness.  First of all, homesickness has been around for a long time.  Probably since the first person left home to go and live and work somewhere else.  The Celts first wrote about this extensively in the fourth century and they called this leaving of the hearth and home to go and live and work in another land the worst form of trial they could ever have.  It was worse than anything else, and I mean anything.  Why?  Why was that so important for the Celts?  Well, I think it’s because they had such a deep love for family and friends and they got together all the time.  Their culture was one of relating to each other.  When you have a very tight knit community that you leave you sense it more deeply when you don’t have it.

Secondly, homesickness is a heart affliction.  It hits us in our core.  It hits us when and where we’re most vulnerable.  When are you most vulnerable?  Well, if you’re like me it’s when you’re lonely, when you’re stressed out, when you’re having trouble keeping up, figuring out or even knowing what your goals or next steps should be, when you’re sick, during, before and after holidays, when you’re reminiscing about what life might be like back home…  Those are all when I’m vulnerable and that’s when homesickness bears down the hardest on me.  That’s why it’s an important issue that we must deal with and we must recognize and we must treat.

The third point about homesickness is that as it afflicts us in this vulnerable place it can create tremendous doubt and desire to return home.  What’s wrong with that?  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the doubt, the desire…  It’s a normal, human condition.  It’s a normal thing that normal people will experience.  It may not be your time to pack up and go home, so how do you work through this?  Hopefully the next few minutes will give us some ideas.

What are some treatments for loneliness?  Number 1 – the basic aspirin-like treatment or a preventative treatment is to try to create more ‘home’ where you are.  Now you probably think that I’ve talked about this in the past a lot, and I have, because it’s a very important concept for me.  Creating more ‘home’ where you are treats a wide variety of issues, problems and feelings.  How do you create more ‘home’?  Well, let’s go back to the Celts and their hearth and home.  So you have a home and you have a hearth, well that’s true, but for them friends and family were important.  Some of you may not have any family and some of you may only have your own little family, but there are a lot of family-like qualities that friends can come to fill – a role that they can come to fill.  Some will become like family.  I think one of your first goals in treating homesickness is to go around and find as many friends as you can.  ‘Well, that’s easier said than done.  Some of us are very, very good at making friends and for some of us it’s a very difficult and hard process and we only have a few after a lot of work’.  Quantity is not necessarily important here.  More than one is important, I think, but a hundred is too many.  The issue is finding people that you share some aspect of your life with and developing regularity in your relationship with them.  That doesn’t mean you have to go out for coffee every Tuesday morning, but it does mean that if there are some things that you like and share, whether they be work activities, hobbies, you name it, that you set up some time to be with them.  Those friends will become more like family over time.

Let me now talk about balance again.  I’m always talking about balance because balance is important.  Some people decide, ‘It’s going to be a lot easier for me…and I’m really tired of working.  I don’t want to make friend-raising work.  I’m going to focus on the people that are from where I come from.  I’m only going to have those friends’.  Well, I think you need some of those and there are some things that you can only do, talk about or laugh about with, with those people.  You need balance, though.  You need friends from the country in which you’re working.  You need those kinds of friends too because they can help you with many other things as well.  They’ll help you with language, they’ll help you with understanding cultural issues, and they’ll help you to navigate some of the things that just seem like they’re too much to bear.  You need to strive for balance.  If you think about it, back at home you probably had friends from many different groups too; you just didn’t think about it that much.  Now here it’s more important.

Number 2 – the treatment for heart affliction is very difficult.  I’m not going to say any of this is easy, by the way.  I think one of the key ways that we treat afflictions of the heart is to try our best to plan ahead.  Plan ahead for times during the year that you’re likely to be vulnerable.  Try to put into them certain things or activities that can help to balance that out.  For example, some people really struggle with loneliness in January and February.  Try to figure out if there are other things that you can do that can make more activities.  Maybe instead of trying to do all your parties, etc. during the holiday season you save up some energy, some finances, and some friends for an ‘after party’.  You don’t have to have an excuse, but you can make any excuse to have a party, get together or to be in fellowship.  It’s something that you plan to do, so you have a January event.  You have a February event.  That will help to stave off some of that stuff.  That doesn’t take care of all of the heart affliction issues, but it does provide you with something to plan for.  Also, have some people who know you that can ask questions.  Maybe in October or September give some friend a list of questions to ask you in February about how you’re doing.  You won’t want to tell them to ask you those questions in February, but if they’re prepared they’re going to ask and they’re going to have to deal with that.  Why do I want you to deal with negative things?  When you talk about them, a lot of things don’t become negative.  They don’t stay negative.

Thirdly, remember that doubt can be good.  Doubt is just a feeling.  What we do with it is where is becomes good or bad.  Doubt causes us to reevaluate where we are.  Maybe you need to plan in some reevaluation points regularly so that you are addressing doubt.  Now, this isn’t that you do it in order to doubt, but it’s appropriate to have regular times of saying, How am I doing?  Think through issues.  Look at how things are going.  Think about what to do for the future.  That way you can never find yourself, or at least it will be hard to find yourself saying, ‘What am I doing?  I have no idea.  Nothing is going right…’

Those are just some ideas about homesickness.  I hope I haven’t made you worse in terms of homesickness.  I hope that I’ve given you some ideas to think about and do over the next week in managing this important condition.  May this place where you are become more home-like in a few key ways this week.

Talk to you next time!