Saturday, August 29, 2009

...where the heart is.

Home.

I'm finally there. Here. Well... at my home on 1262 Ruppel Lane in O'Fallon, Illinois. Home has become a bit muddled as of late. I left a home in Richmond, Texas with Randy and Vicki Roberts, a wonderful couple who housed me for a year. I left a home with the Davis family. I left a home church in Sugar Land, Texas. I left a home in Searcy, Arkansas and left two of my best friends there in the process. I left the Shackelfords in Bolivar, Tennessee after we dropped Jill off at the airport... that was my home for an entire summer... and it still feels like home. And now, I'm here at the home that I love the most. With my family. Finally. It has been way too long.

All these homes, however, remind me of something. Home is not here. None of these places are home to me. Home is a place where you are complete and perfect. Where you lack nothing. Where you want nothing. Where you can exist completely fulfilled. Here in St. Louis, I'm missing my friends. When I'm not here, I miss my family. No matter where I go, no matter where I'm living... my life is never complete. Never whole.

Which is a wonderful truth to discover... because home is not here on this Earth. Home is far beyond. Home is where the heart is. Home is something we will realize one day, but it is not this day. We wait... We hope... We live... We make ourselves at home wherever we are placed, whatever our circumstances, because we know that there is work to do. And we know that God is here.

But we also know that we are never truly at home... and that makes us smile.

Much love to those of you I am missing, those of you who have cared for me, those of you who have made me so at home in a world where we're never at home.

1 comment:

Lindsay James said...

Travis. I like this post. Miss you friend.