Home

I am searching for home. I am missing home. The depth of my core is thirsty for home. For the last ten months, I haven’t known where that was. Home was the family we were building, our shared decisions, our delight in the dreams and the mundane. Home was his chest, his safe arms and ever forgiving voice. Home was us. 

I went home a few weeks ago. To my childhood home. One I’ve run from in some ways. Home was beautiful and green and humid and confining. Home had felt too mundane, too commonplace, not a place of dreams fulfilled. Home was a place filled with reminders of coming of age, of angst and anxieties, of feeling my voice for myself falter under the larger voice of my father’s. A place a beauty, but not a place I wanted to return to. Not without my husband, my new male figure, at my side to help me voice my desires and build my boundaries. Home.

Home felt good this time. The humidity wrapped around me. It was not the dull heaviness of before, it was a warm blanket just out of the dryer. The everywhere green ministered to my soul. I almost cried at the pervasiveness of it. Every inch that was not cut back or poisened out was green, green, alive. My Mama’s humor and kindness delighted my soul. My dad’s patience has grown, and felt safer. I actually discussed, with him and Mama, the reasons for and against living near home. I told him my concerns, and did not feel shut down. I was heard. He loves me so much. There was a grace, even in the middle of my nervousness to share unpleasant thoughts. Grace. Grace. And my sisters and brothers time was gold, as always. I felt home, in all the best of ways. I tremble a bit in writing this. It’s a realization that’s been slowly coming. 

I’m still not sure where my next place of dwelling will be. But I’m so glad that my family feels like home, and that someplace on this planet feels familiar and warm.

Oh, the subject of home. Of course it’s even deeper than this. I want to be held by a spouse in a way that feels like home again one day. And I want that grounding father figure for my children again. And I want to feel at home, no matter where I am. I think I’m finding that in God. There is this thought that no one will last forever in this world. It’s scary to think of losing my siblings, my Mama, my Daddy, or even being widowed again or burying a child. It hurts so much to love. I want to be assured that SOMEONE will experience this whole life with me, will “know my heart,” and debrief everything, always. It’s hard to put into words how truly Papa God is becoming this for me. He knew me before I knew my Trev, deeply. That will never change, it will only deepen. It will only become sweeter. I’m stubbornly believing that. Home is whenever I’m with You. I’m looking forward to experiencing that over whatever years I am here.