(and is with me today)
By Bemis Akelo Ambugo
This article first appeared on www.spirituality.com.
I was sent to a boarding school when I was five. The school was about two hours away from my hometown in Suna Migori, Kenya. I transferred from a small preschool, just walking distance from home, to a new school with 480 students. It seemed pretty big and impersonal at first, and the adjustment was not easy. I was very young, and I was also immensely shy in those days.
Being so young, I don’t remember questioning my parents or doubting their decision. Today, I understand that they simply wanted the best for me. The boarding school provided me with a better learning environment than I could have gotten at home.
One thing that I do remember was my dad’s reassuring calmness each time he left the school after a visit. He always lifted me onto his lap and reminded me that God is present everywhere, and that He governs all His children, as I had learned in the Christian Science Sunday School. All God’s children are always in His care.
My dad would add that we are all God’s children and none of us (this “us,” he always explained, was everyone from my teachers at the school to the parents away from their children) was ever left out of God’s arena. My mother described this same idea by sharing how a mother hen always broods over her chicks. No matter how many chicks there are, the mother hen always fits all of them under her wings, never leaving even one out.
Although I didn’t enjoy seeing my parents leave after they’d visited me at school, I was never really fearful of being separated from them. This idea of God being the only Father-Mother to everyone, all around, gave me a feeling of comfort.
I didn’t get to this point of understanding as simply as I make it sound, though. It took a while for me to accept the idea that this new community was in fact my family, because my parents were not there with me. And although I had two older sisters at the school, I barely knew the people I was spending time with.
What’s more, I was not able to attend Sunday School, and this made it even harder for me to accept the idea of being in my right place. I had to rely on what I had previously learned at Sunday School and simply trust that God was my Parent. I tried to trust that He was protecting, loving, and caring for my every need just as my human parents had done since I’d been born.
Before going to boarding school, I learned a poem by Mary Baker Eddy that she’d written for little children. The poem states:
Father-Mother God,
Loving me,—
Guard me when I sleep;
Guide my little feet
Up to Thee.
(Miscellaneous Writings , 1883–1896, p. 400)
Apart from the Lord’s Prayer, this was the only prayer I knew at the time. At home, every night before we went to sleep, my sisters and I said this prayer. And so I continued this practice at the new school. As time passed, I realized I was content at school, and understood that I was never cut off from my family.
Today, I am still amazed at how I learned to rely on God at a young age—and to know that I was right at home wherever I needed to be.
Later, when I was 13, I had to move to another school—this time in England. I left not only the school that had become home to me, but also my family, friends, and home country, with its people and culture that I love so dearly. This was by far the biggest challenge I had yet faced, but in many ways it was also a great blessing. I felt peaceful and loved.The move enabled me to continue my studies in a better school, and in an environment that offered me more options in life. As I waited at the airport before I left Kenya, I felt a sense of calmness, similar to what my dad expressed years earlier when he was leaving me at the new school. I felt peaceful and loved, and I didn’t doubt that this love would be present in England, too.
I received a very warm welcome in England. Nevertheless, I was overcome with loneliness. This school was even bigger than my old school in Kenya, and although everyone was friendly, I felt different from the other students. I focused a lot on physical differences, such as the British accent, the food, and the fact that I was one of only five black African students attending the school at the time. I became so withdrawn that many people thought I wouldn’t make it through the term. Throughout all this, I never stopped praying and continually affirming that God’s presence was all around and governing all of us. One Wednesday evening, I decided to go to a testimony meeting at the local Christian Science church. I have a habit of looking through the selected hymns at church services before the service begins, and I did so on this evening. When I got to the last hymn, I paid more attention to the words since I was not familiar with them. The first verse reads:
Pilgrim on earth, home and heaven are within thee,
Heir of the ages and child of the day.
Cared for, watched over, beloved and protected,
Walk thou with courage each step of the way.
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 278)
I read that and chuckled to myself because I had known this all along. I was never away from my home—my real home, which is spiritual in nature—nor was I ever cut off from Love’s care and protection. Divine Love was always watching over me and everyone else. At the end of the service, I sang the hymn with a renewed sense of peace. And I soon felt at home in a way I never could have imagined possible before.
These childhood experiences have stayed with me. Today I’m at college in the United States, but even though I’m living still farther from my home country and those I love, I continue to remind myself that I am in my right place.
As God’s child, I am simply carrying out the design of my heavenly Father, and for the moment this is the place that blesses me best. Therefore, it has to be home!
Bemmy Ambugo is currently attending college in Elsah, Illinois. She graduates in 2007 and isn’t sure yet where her next home will be.
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