Where is my home? In my journey with the Lord so far, the answer to this question has not been a simple one. I have had many homes: one comfortable and familiar, one surprising and stretching, one full of heartache and grace, and one not yet seen, whose architect and builder is God.

My mind first goes to a tree-filled neighborhood in a Pittsburgh suburb, to a house with peeling paint, a porch swing, and a basketball hoop in the back. This is the place where my parents loved me, prayed for me, faithfully taught and disciplined me. This is where I was convicted of my sin and my need for a Savior, and first trusted in Christ for forgiveness. My faith was challenged and stretched here, but always within a framework of loving protection and belonging. I praise the Lord for this rich heritage, for this first home that will always be home to me.

My second home changes sometimes, because it is wherever Tony lives. I met my wonderful husband the first week of college. He was a handsome foreigner with the brogue of an Ulsterman and the gesticulating hands of a Greek. On the surface we were very different, but, as our friendship grew, I knew that he was the man I wanted to marry. However, as an international student from Cyprus, he was legally bound to return to the island when he finished studying.

Whatever nice, tidy, safe plan I thought I had for my life, marriage to Tony turned it on its head. I had never really considered living outside the U.S., preferring the comfortable, the planned, and the familiar. But praise be to God for disrupting my plans and giving me Tony, making his calling my calling, and his home my home.

After graduation, marriage, and two years of further study in Philadelphia, the time came for us to move to Cyprus. I kissed my family goodbye, boarded the plane with my husband and our three-month-old daughter, Eliya, and flew “home.”

We started building a life in this new place—working in the family business, buying a house, and serving in our small, ethnically diverse church. Slowly, my familiarity with and love for this beautiful island grew, as well as my burden for its people. Cyprus is Christian in name, but the true gospel is buried under layers of ancient language and ritual, icons and incense. The evangelical commitment to Scripture alone, Christ alone, and faith alone is labeled as heresy, and is a stumbling block to many. We long for the people of Cyprus to read the Bible and hear it preached in their own language, for them to come to know the living God.

Through the first year—exciting, challenging and sometimes exhausting—the Lord sustained us and blessed us. Our small church enjoyed sweet fellowship, hearing the Word, bearing each other’s burdens, and living in unity despite our ethnic diversity and limited resources. By the end of the second year, I was expecting our second child, another girl.

But all was not well. A routine ultrasound revealed that she had something terribly wrong with her heart–a complex congenital heart defect, which would require immediate surgery after birth. Our doctors had not seen many children with such a severe defect, and the surgery could not be done in Cyprus.

Life seemed to pause as we tried to digest this news. We sought a second opinion in London to see what could be done for our baby. We grieved for our little one and the limits her weak heart would place on her life. However, our doctors were highly qualified and had helped children with similar defects go on to live full, rich lives into adulthood. As we made our plans, we were amazed to see the worldwide body of Christ mobilize on several continents to help us move our little family to London, raise the money to pay for open-heart surgery, and provide for all of our needs, including use of a three-bedroom flat just blocks from the hospital!

We purposed to pray for one encouragement every day, and there was not a day where we couldn’t thank God for something. Some days it was a donation or hopeful news from a doctor.

Then came the wonderful day when we got to meet little Joanna Grace, painful as it was to have her quickly whisked away for medical attention. The Lord brought Joanna through a successful bypass procedure at just 42 hours old. As she recovered over the next several days, the tubes and wires were removed one by one. After a week she had graduated from intensive care into our own room. There she began to learn how to nurse, sleepily but successfully, and she even started to regain her birth weight. She started to open her beautiful blue eyes, to look around at us, her people, who loved her so dearly.

At last came the day when we got to bring Joanna home to our little flat. I will always remember the date because it was the day Prince George was born just a few blocks away from us. The doctors were encouraged by Joanna’s progress and said that, except for a few restrictions, we should try to live normally. So we did—taking walks to the grocery store, to several London parks, and to the church we were attending. What a blessing to worship together as a family with the people of God, to take the Lord’s supper and to sing of His great faithfulness!

But one morning Joanna woke up, and something was not right. Her cry was different, weak and strange. She was unable to nurse, and her temperature was dangerously low. We rushed her back to the hospital, trying to stem our panic. She was going into shock. The doctors tried everything, working for over an hour to revive her. Finally, it was time to stop. Our Joanna was gone.

How can I describe the pain of that day? The phone calls, the arrangements to bury our child and register her death. The slow walk home in the rain, stopping at the pharmacy for something to stop the milk that kept flowing despite the reality that I had no baby to give it to.

Yet, as I remember that day, I know God was with us. He was familiar with that path from the hospital—each step, each puddle, that quick detour for the pills—and He was there with us, hemming us in behind and before. His grace was present and sufficient, even in this.

God provided loved ones close by to weep with us, to listen as we worked through our guilt and regret, and to point us to the Savior. God gave us little two-year-old Eliya, who still managed to make us laugh with her toddler antics. She still needed us, and that helped. A few days later, the Lord gave us strength to sing, full-voiced, even as Tony carried that little white box to put in the ground. Great is Your faithfulness. It is well with my soul. The Lord is my Shepherd.

In Romans 8, Paul says that creation is groaning under the weight of its bondage to death and decay, and with it are the people of God. For Joanna we groaned in a way we had never groaned before. Things are not as they should be. Babies are not supposed to die. Even Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, and we share in His sorrow at what sin has done to this world.

Today, my home is in the “already but not yet.” Life goes on and time has dulled the pain. God, in his kindness, has given us another child, Maria, and what a joy she is! My arms are full again, and my days are busy. Sorrow and joy are tangled up so that I can’t always tell where one ends and the other begins. Family photos are bittersweet. People ask how many children I have and I don’t know what to say.

There are lingering questions in this place. How can I really trust God with my children? Why should I pray for health and safety knowing God might say no? Why has He healed others but not my child? What about the promises?

I know these questions are not unique to me. The people of God have been asking them long before I was born. The Scriptures, particularly the Psalms, invite me to lean into the pain, to take these questions to God, rather than turning away in despair. Where else is there to go? God does give answers—His character, His past faithfulness, examples of others who have stood firm through trials—and these all involve knowing Him, trusting Him. But God’s clearest answer is the cross. Romans 8 speaks not only of groaning, but also of eager expectation. There is a day of liberation coming, for us and for the whole Creation, and Jesus is the liberator. God came to live among us, to suffer with us, through His death to defeat sin and death, and to rise again, securing for us a real and certain hope—a future home.

Our hopes for Joanna were earthly and temporary. Those hopes were not wrong but, in God’s providence, He chose a more permanent solution. Even Lazarus, Dorcas, and Jairus’ daughter died a second time. But the life promised to Joanna, and to all of us who belong to Christ, is eternal life. Sometimes the Lord chooses to heal diseases, and I do not downplay the wonder and glory of that, but it is only a taste of the glory to come.

Someday bodies will rise, suffering will be turned to glory, and all things will be made new. There will be no more pain or death or sin, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. These are great and precious promises, and the One who makes them is faithful and true. So I cling to Him, sometimes by my fingertips, knowing that He is the one actually holding onto me.

There are few guarantees in the life of a sojourner. Home may be in Pittsburgh, Larnaca, London, or someplace unknown. There may be greater trials and sorrows to come. But I know my home is secure, prepared and kept for me by my Savior.

Author Bekah Mastris lives in Allison Park, Pa., with her husband, Tony, and their daughters Eliya and Maria. She is a member of the Grace (Gibsonia, Pa.) RP Church. Her husband is in his first year studying for pastoral ministry at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.