The Story
Imagine this...life is going along great. All the pieces seem to be falling into place, just where you want them. Then BAM! life starts spinning completely out of control. That sums up 2005 for me. I was born and raised in New Orleans, and like thousands of others, my life was forever changed by Hurricane Katrina, but the storms of my life had started four months earlier. In April, my father died very suddenly and very unexpectedly of a heart attack. No warning, no goodbyes. I was just starting to pull myself together after the loss of the most important man in my life when Katrina rolled in and took everything else that I ever called home. My family had evacuated to Houston. A few days after the storm, there in my sister and her husband's one bedroom apartment, the 14 of us watched as helicopters gave us our first glimpse of the destruction. Everything was destroyed. That night I wrote the first two lines of this song...then there was nothing. I spent the next several months in a spiritual pit. No matter how much I wanted to and how hard I tried, all of my praises to God were empty. I was grateful that we were all safe, that we had a place to stay, that we got into our new house in Ponchatoula quickly, but my heart just couldn't let go of the hurt I felt. Honestly, I joined the band for purely selfish reasons. I wanted to sing and being in the band would give me the chance to do that. The last thing I felt like doing was praising God and leading worship. But our God is a God of miracles. He will use the smallest opening to forever change our lives. Within the first month of being in the band, He took my selfish little heart and poured so much desire to praise into me that couldn't stop writing. Finishing "Home Is..." was very much a healing process for me. It's so amazing that God gave me the grace I needed to finish this song, which He knew would serve to help me heal. Things always line up so perfectly with God. I'm honored to have written it. My hope is that it will bring healing to all who need it because no matter what is going on in life, even in the times when we feel that we have no place to go, God is our Father, God is our shelter and provider, He is our home. ~Angelina~
