home.

I'm sitting here at home (my real home in North Carolina) and I cannot help but be so homesick for the way things were.  You know, those few years called college when I got to play adult for most of the year but then come home for summers and be with my family and my friends.  Those years when I was thirty-five minutes down the road and if I ever just needed a hug from my dad or a face-to-face conversation with my mom, I could hop in the car and be there lickety-split.

I wouldn't consider myself a homebody, but I do know that I love my family...my crazy, broken, messed up family...more than anyone else in this world.  And being five to six hours (sometimes more, thank you traffic) away from them is so hard.

Being at home makes these feelings stronger, of course, but right now there is a part of me wishing I had never left North Carolina.  When I take a step back, I remember that I do love my life in D.C.  And I am happy that, for all the pain and heartache the last year brought me, I am out in the world doing something different than what I ever saw for myself.

But Lord, tonight I have to ask, why couldn't the blessings have just stayed the same?  Why didn't life stay as it was?  Stay easy?  Stay comfortable?

Oh.  Maybe this is it.  We talked at church a few weeks ago about how God is the gardener in our lives, and that He prunes the vine so that there may be new growth and new life.  We also talked about how very painful that pruning can be; that it involves the Lord cutting very real things out of our lives, things that we might want to hold on to.

I think the Lord needed to get me out of my easy, comfortable life so that He could really do some work on me.  He needed to strip me of everything familiar so that I was left with Him and Him alone to heal me, mold me, and change me.

I'll be honest...I'm still such a work in progress, and in this moment I just need to cry a little for what was.


I've been gone so long I can barely say
All I know is now I want to stay
Has it been too long since I went away?
Cause I'm trying to find the words
But I can barely say