Ginny Lou and I went with a friend from Antakya to see her childhood home for the first time after the earthquakes.

“Home is where the heart is.” “Home is where I am sleeping at night.” “There’s no place like home.” My favorite Dolly Parton song (I’m a good Tennessean and therefore love Dolly Parton) is entitled “Home” and one line says “I’ll never be lost as long as I know there’s a place like that where I can go, where I can restore my weary soul on the mountain slopes and the soft blue smoke of home.”

The mountain slopes of the Smokies that I love so much.

“Home” is an idea rooted in the souls of men but it manifests itself in as many ways as there are people. This year I experienced a new idea of “home.” On February 6 I was “home” in my apartment on the 9th floor of a 12-story building in Adana, Turkey. I’m assuming that I was sleeping well because I have no memory of the night before 4:15am. However, that day from 4:15am onward will be forever burned into my mind. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake began shaking my apartment and the homes of millions of other residents of southeast Turkey and northern Syria.

I left my “home” after the shaking stopped, wondering if I would ever return. I had never lived through an earthquake of that magnitude. And as I descended the 9 flights of stairs to the bottom I passed X-shaped cracks spanning from corner to corner on the stairwell walls.

Many peoples’ homes were completely destroyed.

I was advised not to return home until the apartment building could be inspected. Many of my neighbors and people in cities all over the affected region made the same decision. Some traveled to stay with family and friends in other parts of the country, some slept in their cars or in tents. Others stayed in municipal buildings like expo centers and gymnasiums. I decided to stay with friends in Adana who did not have any visible cracking in their building. In total I lived in four different places over the course of two months.

Many people are living in containers while they wait for their homes to be rebuilt.

People try to make the containers as “homey” as possible.

Bulut (which means “cloud” in Turkish) is sitting in front of his home where his owner made makeshift flower pots out of water bottles.

The government inspection report returned with news that the building did have some damage, so Ginny Lou and I decided to move to an undamaged building in Adana. Another event was happening six thousand miles away from the earthquake: my mom was in the process of selling my childhood home. Besides my 9th floor apartment, it was the other place in the world I thought of as “home.” It was strange to have nowhere in the world that fit the idea of “home.”

My Tennessee childhood home had lots of green and lots of space.

I now have a new place to call home in Tennessee.

So what did I learn during the two months of not having my own “home” to live in?

1—People are more important than architectural structures

The people I lived with were “home” for me. I might not have had my “own home,” but the people who graciously let me live with them during that season made their home my home. Similarly, my childhood home in Tennessee may not be where my family is physically located anymore, but I still have my family.

I also watched many people grieve the loss of their families here in Turkey. They lost their family homes too but that was not the primary topic of conversation. Many people lost moms and dads, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. Some people lost everyone. Physical homes are not inconsequential but human beings are greater. Let us not forget to love the invisible soul more than anything found in the physical world.

2—I was made for place

When I was a kid I had dreams of tying up my small possessions in a handkerchief on a pole and setting out to explore the world. Some people love to wander. But most people settle in a home. Why? I think because people were made for place. We want a place to belong, a place for when we do not have anywhere else to be. We go to work, visit family, run errands, and explore new places, but where do we go when that is done? There is a place in the world where we belong, a place that is home.

It is hard to imagine how people were living their lives in these homes and then in a moment everything changed.

It was strange having a view of the inside of the home from the street.

3—Home is temporary. Souls are eternal.

Millions of people in southeast Turkey and northern Syria do not have “homes” like they did before. They are living with family or in tents or containers. In many of the affected cities where there used to be structures made of concrete and metal there are now piles of rubble or holes in the ground where a building once stood. We can lose our home in a moment. But our souls last forever. I grieve for the people who have lost so much.