{"id":40402,"date":"2026-08-27T00:59:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T05:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40402"},"modified":"2026-08-27T01:06:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T06:06:42","slug":"ive-been-an-alien-in-this-place-but-i-finally-see-my-way-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40402","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve been an alien in this place, but I finally see my way home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have been a stranger in this place all my life.<\/p>\n

An alien. Just a visitor.<\/p>\n

I was born among a people who I didn\u2019t understand. A society that felt alien. A culture that felt cruel and perverted.<\/p>\n

All my life, I have struggled between two competing compulsions. Part of me felt as though I had to fit in here. I felt that I had to conform. I had to become acceptable to the people around me \u2014 the ones who were so quick to judge me and ridicule me when I didn\u2019t imitate them.<\/p>\n

The other part of me has always been searching for a home that I knew was somewhere else. That part of me knew that I was an alien among these people. That part knew that I was looking for something. A person? A place? A force? I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

The more I understood that I was a stranger in this land, the more I vaguely conceived that I was looking for another place. Not a physical place that\u2019s on a map. I was looking for the place where I would find this \u201csomething\u201d that I was compelled to find.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been traveling for a long time, metaphorically speaking. I\u2019ve had to leave behind everything that was familiar to me when I started. I didn\u2019t have a map. I just had the vaguest understanding that it was a land far away \u2014 and that it was shrouded in fog or clouds or mystery.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve circled this place over and over. I\u2019ve come close and then lost it. I\u2019ve gotten scared \u2014 at times \u2014 and run back to the familiar world and culture where I started. Each time that\u2019s happened, I was back at the starting point, but I had a slightly more clear vision of where I needed to go.<\/p>\n

I discovered that finding this fabled destination wasn\u2019t just about a map. It wasn\u2019t the same as walking to a physical place. In all my stumbling and bumbling efforts to find this home, I finally had to accept that getting to this place required me to completely change who I was.<\/p>\n

It slowly became evident that I couldn\u2019t find this place without the renewing of my mind and my heart. And the more I worked toward that inward change, the less I was welcome in the outward world where I lived. The less I was like the people of the culture in which I\u2019d grown up.<\/p>\n

I was afraid, though, because it seemed to require me to give up what I knew before having a real understanding of where I was going.<\/p>\n

After all these years, I am a weary traveler who sees this place in the clouds. I can\u2019t see it clearly yet, but I know it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n

It feels as though I\u2019m finally at a place where there is a footbridge from the land I\u2019ve known to this place I\u2019ve been seeking. This place that feels like my home.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve been carrying baggage all this way, thinking I can bring it with me to my home. And now I realize I have to cross this footbridge that\u2019s sturdy enough to carry me all by myself, but it\u2019s not strong enough to support the baggage I\u2019ve carried for a lifetime.<\/p>\n

I have to give up the things I\u2019ve carried from the world behind me. If I want to cross that footbridge, I have to walk across with nothing other than my own mind, my own heart and my own soul.<\/p>\n

Even though this is the place I\u2019ve been seeking, I\u2019m afraid to give up what I\u2019ve brought with me, because I don\u2019t know how to live without them.<\/p>\n

The only currency of the place on the other side is love.<\/p>\n

If I want to live in that place, I have to give up things that have served me for decades. Pride. Bitterness. Resentment. Anger. Hatred. Selfishness. Ego.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid to fully let those things go, because I\u2019ve nursed them \u2014 in the privacy of my heart \u2014 as the things that allowed me to survive the alien world where I lived.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve discovered love, but I understand it in only the most rudimentary way. I\u2019ve talked about love all my life. I\u2019ve heard it discussed and preached over and over, but it\u2019s been a pale imitation of the real thing.<\/p>\n

If I set down all of the baggage I\u2019ve brought with me, I will have nothing that the world behind me would truly value.<\/p>\n

I have learned much about love, but do I have enough to be welcomed in this place where I am going? I feel like such an infant in my learning and my experience of love. Can I truly give up all of my old ways \u2014 enough to live in a place where only love matters?<\/p>\n

And this is where I stand. I know enough of the love to feel some of it. To experience awakenings of that love in my heart. To know that the burning flames of that love are more powerful than anything back in the world from which I come.<\/p>\n

I am afraid to fully commit to love.<\/p>\n

I am afraid to give up all of my baggage.<\/p>\n

But I stand at this footbridge knowing that this is what I\u2019ve been looking for all my life. And I know I have no choice. I have to allow my mind and heart and spirit to be completely transformed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a child. A baby. A stranger. An alien.<\/p>\n

I know I\u2019ve come too far to go back. I must learn to trust completely in love. And that requires me to drop the baggage \u2014 to close my eyes and step out in faith that love will carry me home.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong> As I wrote this, I kept hearing a song that I haven\u2019t heard for many years. When I was much younger, an artist named Brown Bannister \u2014 who was mostly known as a producer for other Christian artists \u2014 had a hauntingly beautiful song<\/a> that seems to capture some of what I\u2019m feeling as I write this. It\u2019s a cover of a song by English artist Leslie Duncan.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been a stranger in this place all my life. An alien. Just a visitor. I was born among a people who I didn\u2019t understand. A society that felt alien. A culture that felt cruel and perverted. All my life, I have struggled between two competing compulsions. Part of me felt as though I Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-avE","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40402"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40417,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40402\/revisions\/40417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}