My Heart In A Suitcase

“The heart is where the home is.”

“My home is not a place, it’s people.”

My life is lived in a suitcase. My heart however, has been in once place, with one person, even when I didn’t realize it.  But its beautiful white home with a wrap-around porch and butterfly garden and tire swing hanging from a giant oak tree has been infested with termites that are eating it from the inside out. My heart loves its home, with its entirety, but termites are nasty and will eventually eat its gorgeous home from the inside out until it caves in. So I picked my heart back up and put it in the bottom of my suitcase, zippers locked and safe from sleazy pick pocketers. 

Now my heart is here in Waynesburg, with me. I have no one here, or anywhere, who I would dare to trust it with, so it’s mine again for the first time in ages. It’s a very strange lifestyle—being independent, running my own life without it directly affecting anyone, deciding my own schedule, socializing with whoever I please until whenever I please. Or go to Slingin Ink downtown and having this dude put metal through my stomach.  I went with a friend who was getting her trachea pierced, and I was debating on getting a belly button piercing on the way there. I watched him put on gloves, sterilize his utensils, and give her thorough instructions on how to clean it (“don’t talk on the phone on this ear, or sleep on dirty pillow cases, or let boys lick your ears, or girls, or cats”) as I held her hand.  Then he told me to lift up my shirt. Then he put yellow goop all over my stomach. Then he told me to lay down. Then he stuck a metal clamp on either side of my naval. Then he stuck something very sharp that wasn’t a needle or a gun, through my skin and down my flesh. My fingers instinctively slid towards the pain and he said “do you want your fingers pierced too, while I’m at it?” I gave them to my friend to hold instead. I asked if it was bleeding. ‘Yea man! Can’t you feel that warm liquid running down your side?” 

“It’s not bleeding at all! Stop trying to scare her!” said my friend to the joking man with the sharp things in my gut. 

I looked down and faintly said “Dude! There’s metal in my stomach.…” 

“Yeah! How about that?!” He laughed.

All this nonsense sounds freeing, especially after having someone in the passenger’s seat with me for so long, but it’s a lonely road with just me and my heart in a suitcase. There is no one to argue over what music to listen to or what road to take or where we should stop to eat. There’s no one to greet me when I get off the bus…because I don’t have a destination anymore. 

Now, every part of me is packed in my handy little black suitcase, and ready to hit the open road.

I don’t even need my suitcase. I don’t need this baggage and this heavy heart that adds another ten pounds to the price of luggage at the airport! Really, it’s just me and God’s direction as my travel guide, His word as my travel reading, and His Spirit as my travelling companion. 

“Not all those who wander are lost.”-Gandalf.

My life in a suitcase consists of going wherever God tells me to go next on His creation.