Harry and Meghan are coming home – but what does home really mean?

Harry and Meghan are coming home. Their children, Archie and Lilibet, have been enrolled in schools here, and they will be living somewhere outside London. One can only speculate as to the reasons for Harry and Meghan’s return. But whatever the case, it’s hard to go back to a place you’ve left, and even harder if you didn’t feel welcome there. For me, it raises several questions – what is home, and what does it really mean to belong? And is it really possible to go back when you’ve seemingly burned your bridges?

While Harry has reportedly been missing the UK, a place where he feels more at home, for many foreigners, like Meghan, moving to the UK can be hard. The cultural differences, including the minefield that is British politeness, can make ‘naturalising’ a hard task for any outsider, and make it even harder to actually feel at home here.

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Even for me, though born and bred in the UK, a propensity for being quite direct (not a widely accepted quality in a Brit), though well-meaning, can ruffle feathers. Others have it worse. Several friends who have moved here, including Americans, Kiwis, Canadians and Aussies, have lamented the difficulty in navigating the nuances of language, social norms and etiquette, which can seem designed to catch people out.

When you overlay that with the very real possibility of xenophobia and racism, assimilating into the UK can feel confusing and painful. We all want to belong, and ideally without having to jump through too many hoops.

That said, even if we did burn our bridges, perhaps we really can rebuild them. 

That said, even if we did burn our bridges, perhaps we really can rebuild them. The Bible offers hope. In Jesus’ parable, when a lost (or ‘prodigal’) son finally returned home after demanding and then squandering his inheritance and hitting rock bottom, he was so chastened by his failures that he was willing to live amongst the pigs on his father’s estate and eat up their scraps. He accepted what he ‘deserved’ for his actions, and he felt he deserved no more than the pigsty. But his father, who might justifiably have agreed, instead showed him mercy. What’s more, he compromised his own dignity to run to him and welcome him home, restoring him by putting a robe on his shoulders and a ring on his finger. It was scandalous grace, not what he ‘deserved’ at all.

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And in Genesis, after many years away, Jacob returned ‘home’ a very rich man but also a much wiser one. Since leaving, he had been thoroughly schooled by his uncle Laban, who was almost as duplicitous as he was, and had paid the price. He nervously approached home, laden with gifts and goodwill offerings, so fearful that he would be rejected and even killed by his brother, Esau. It’s what he deserved, after all. Many years before, Jacob had stolen Esau’s birthright through cunning and deception, so he needed to atone for it. But meeting on the road after all these years, Esau’s anger had dissipated, and instead of anger, “he ran to Jacob and embraced him”. They were restored to each other, no longer the competing siblings from childhood, but equals. And older, wiser individuals in their own right.

‘Home’ is full of meaning and significance; it carries good memories and painful ones.

‘Home’ is full of meaning and significance; it carries good memories and painful ones. Ironically, it can be at home that we feel least ‘at home’. And pressure to conform, fit in and toe the line makes self-differentiating that much harder, because it can come at a high cost. There are lessons we learn best at a distance, as well as questions we can finally answer. Like, Who Am I? We are not our parents, or our siblings, or our family of origin.

We have our own lives to live, our own callings to follow and our own identities to inhabit. So perhaps coming home is also, critically, about coming home to ourselves. When we know who we are and what we stand for, finding home can be easier because we carry it within ourselves. And we can feel ‘at home’ anywhere. It might even help in building new relationships with people who were always dear to us, especially when grace and mercy triumph.