home

Home. A word that is so complex & full. I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately. Not least because we just made it “home” for an extended, glorious, harvest stay. It was just lovely. My favorite trip home yet. It’s so hard to live away from family. Yet, I know I’m where I’m supposed to be. Here in Oregon, I’ve had the most sense of belonging I’ve had in my life. I always blamed the itchy feet on a sense of wanderlust passed down from my forefathers. I never quite felt like I had roots in any of the places I’ve lived. A new place always beckoned just over the horizon. until now. Oregon feels like home. (All photos are from our recent trip to IL with the friends & family we love so dearly.) 

 It would be hard for me to leave it. Not that I never would, or never will, not if God calls us elsewhere. But it has become home to me. I feel guilty sometimes that I feel more home here than in my childhood state. Or than in the place where my family originated. Or away from my own family. What’s wrong with me, I wonder, sometimes. It’s not that I never get homesick for my family, or quilt-square comfortable miles of cornfields, or the woods & creeks that were my childhood. I do. But I can’t go back there either, not to what I remember anyway. Life hasn’t stopped for them either. Trees have fallen, babies have been born, friends have moved, my old bedroom has a new coat of paint. I would return only to find my spot has been filled. And that is okay. There are times I just don’t know if I can bear it, to be missing out on all the little life events, the growingups of my precious nieces & nephews, the subtle everyday life happenings that end up being the most treasured memories.

When those feelings of homesickness overwhelm me, when the 2,000 miles feels like an impossible barrier, I find comfort in another home. Our real home. The one we are all waiting for. The one where distance is nonexistent, where separation is no more. Where time is forgotten & those we love will all be there, at our fingertips, by our sides. Forever. I won’t be living two places at once. My heart won’t be scattered across this country anymore, little pieces left wherever I loved & lived. It will be whole again & fuller than I can imagine. Heaven. Our true home. The home we were made for.