I did not come to realize the true meaning of home until I left it. I was brought up in my grandma's house. It was a big old Chinese mansion side rooms on the wings. My concept of home was as rooted and conservative as that house.

It was not until the hurricane of the Culture Revolution swept through the land that I realized a home could be uprooted and set to drift in the currents.

That year on the bank of Chin-Why river (Nanjing), I had my first taste of drifting. My uncle, who had a "problem background", was sent to the countryside to be re-educated. The day he left there was not the usual boisterous noise from the farewell drums and gongs, nor were there good-bye tears. Together with his wife and children, carrying some boxes and cans, they quietly walked down the winding lane where they were born and raised. As I gazed at the diminishing figures, for the first time I tasted the gloominess of life.

I followed them to the bank of Chin-Why river. When the boat was launched, wailing could be heard all over the place. I did not wave good-bye nor did I cry. I just gazed numbly at the boat sailing farther and farther away . . . . .

Because of my conservative up-bringing, I never learned to relish moving or traveling. Yet in these past few years, my family's footprints were all over the world. We moved from South America to North America, from the Mid-west to the South, and then to the west coast of America. We were like nomads, wandering from one stop to the next.

I remember the autumn day in 1990 when we left the warm breezes of the Caribbean and flew to a small town in the Midwest of America. Standing in the cold night and knowing no one in town, we heard nothing but the rustle of the corn swaying in the wind. At that moment, I felt I could echo the sadness and melancholy of all the wanderers of the past.

A year later, we were ready to settle down in that quiet little town with new found friends and sincere townspeople, who were in some ways so much like the peasants in northern China. Then we realized that this still was not the last stop of our journey.

Early in the morning, as we started up our U-HAUL, I cast a last glance out the window. I saw a trail of foot prints on the snowy ground. Suddenly I remembered a line in the letter Maxim Gorki wrote to his son, "You are gone, but the flowers you left behind are growing. Whenever I see them I say to myself, 'My son has left behind the most beautiful thing in the world'....".

I smiled. I knew I had left the most beautiful thing behind. Had I never left my nest, I would have clung to a house, invested my life in it, and called it home. I knew I would not have come to know the insurpassable love of God, the One who sheds beautiful light along the path of a pilgrim.

In my life's journey, I know I have left behind the most beautiful thing ¡V the joyful notes of a reborn heart. A heart that was once filled with gloom but transformed into joyfulness when touched by eternity.

So I say, as we travel from one life's stop to the other, it need not be gloomy so long as there is sunshine on the way and hope in our heart -- as long as we are heaven- bound.

Ms. Ning Zi came from Nanjing. She was an editor and reporter in China and is now a theological seminary student in Los Angeles.