Coming Home

For a brief moment in time, I'm alone. Moments of solitude are rare nowadays... part of the package... a package that I love. But it's always in these pauses from the demands of "Mommy! Mommy!" that the emotions settle and my heart asserts itself into the silence. Today, I'm sad.

Contentment has been easy to come by in our return to Asheville. Despite being a Florida native, returning to live in Florida a year and a half ago didn't feel like a particular homecoming. The Blue Ridge stole my heart about the same time that Joshua did, almost a decade ago. And two weeks ago we returned to once again make the mountains our home. On moving day I ascended up the first steep grade from the Piedmont alone in the car with Olivia, and I felt contentment settle upon me, just like the misty clouds settled upon the weathered shoulders of the mountains that day, a mantle laid upon gentle ridges burgeoning with the first blossoms of spring. The beauty of this place ministers to my soul. The change of the seasons mirrors an internal longing I have for transformation. It makes me happy to think about raising my children here. We have a community glad to see us return. Life is full of good things.

But sad I am, all the same. The heart doesn't always keep time with circumstances. I miss the friendship of my mother, the fullness of having a home always full with life and love and voices laughing and discussing and disagreeing and arguing over whether we would be watching yet another political debate or the Lightning game. I see in my children, especially my son, the hole that the absence of Nana and PopPop has left. I see it in myself, if I look closely enough. And it reminds me of the inevitability of death (because if you know me well, you know that eventually everything circles around to death for me) and the fact that one day the loss will be permanent until we are reunited in Glory, not just a temporary geographical separation lessened by FaceTime and phone calls. And this is probably where that familiar sadness comes to settle... a part of me wounded in childhood that left a large and jagged scar; the part that is always eager to play its song when anything remotely hinting of loss says hello. And so I write for catharsis instead of turning to more detrimental coping devices. Since all of the Oreos are gone.  

We are all wounded people -- I know how deeply my one childhood trauma has affected me, even 25 years later. It makes my heart ache for those more deeply broken, more repeatedly broken, or still with gaping wounds that the Healer has not been invited to touch. Let us treat each other gently, yes? And on this Good Monday let us praise God that by His wounds we are healed... what a pleasure to trust in and allow our Lord to deal with our guarded and wounded places, He who has redemption in mind. It is Good News, indeed.