~On Going Home~

There’s a joke between my husband, Rick, and I that is so old it makes me smile every time…even as I’m chiding him for bringing it up. It comes up on the drive home from...well anywhere we need to travel to get back home. (This also includes visits to the store in 5 o'clock traffic.) He actually has started to wait me out, see if I'll say it first. I hardly ever do. Wishful thinking has always irritated me. I'm a born realist.


When we go away for a family vacation, no matter how much fun my older daughter’s having, towards the end of the trip she’ll whisper as she's going to bed, “I miss Ember.” Ember is our cat, who, other than an amazing huntress, has little affection for my daughter. For a while Arowyn’s confession puzzled me. Why does she miss a cat she hardly see when we're at the house? But then I realized, likely she’s not missing the cat, she’s missing where the cat is…she’s missing home.

On a different note ~ you'll get it in a second ;) my baby girl, Selah has the worst cry in the world. Listening to that child complain/cry is like attending a symphony of long nailed performers scratching out “Taps” on chalkboard. My Arowyn slept through the night at four and half WEEKS old. Selah is almost thirteen months and she rarely sleeps through the night. It has nothing to do with compassion or will power…I feel like the Grinch laying next to my husband, who's also awake, saying “Oh the NOISE, NOISE, NOISE!” Inevitable I get up.

I go get her. She’s still crying. I pick her up, she stops, amazingly enough (I know, roll the eyes!) She lays her head on my left shoulder. I’ve learned not to hunch them up anymore, but to give her a somewhat flat surface to lie on. She lets out a shuddered sigh, content, as one tiny arm wraps around my neck and I feel the press of her fingers against my hair. Everything about her, in that moment, says she’s “home”. She’s found the place where she belongs.

I was thinking about Selah's nighttime wakings this morning, as last night was particularly difficult, and I realized something very special. My children have given me a great gift. Arowyn, has shown me the urge to remember to yearn to go home, not just when things get tough and heaven seems a wistful, easy escape (like “wouldn’t it be great if God came back this awful day, TODAY!) but even when all is “right” in my world. Because the fact is, it is wrong…the world isn’t whose it should be. It isn’t Christ’s…yet.

And Selah, she reminds me what it will be like to finally get to where I belong. That place where there will be eternal peace and rest from trouble, from the strife God has guaranteed to the children of men. One day, I’ll lay my head down on shoulders that never tilt or falter and I’ll know I am where I belong. I’m home.

We’ll be taking a family trip soon, whether to Richmond or some other place for my husband’s work. We’ll start off on our trip, excited and energetic and who knows where the conversations we have will lead us. But as sure as I’m sitting here, writing this post, I know the joke which almost speaks itself into the waiting tiredness of a quiet car, traveling back to the Blue Ridge area of VA. Rick gives me a look that says, “Here it comes. The moment you’ve been waiting for since the downward slope began."

~“Don’t you ever just wish you could wish yourself home?”

This time I'll remember "the hope that does not disappoint" and this self-proclaimed realist will reply:

~“I do now.”