Home is not a place

Recently we traveled back to NY on the first leg of a trip to WA to witness our son being married.  Before we left I kept thinking about the fact that I was going home. The anticipation helped sustain me through the preparations and all the tension as my mother began to sense that something was going on and reacted as only a child or the mentally challenged can.

After a day full of challenges and trials that travel can bring on we arrived back at the farm and I found myself embraced by my eldest son and realized that the place was not what I was so looking forward to.

My soul had longed not for trees, fields, and scenery.  What my soul needed was sticky fingers.

Little boys digging dirt and talking 100 miles an hour as he planted trees for his mom.

I had longed for the gentle pace of men leaning on shovels and talking about machinery.

My heart had missed the sight of Papa with his little people and my ears needed the chirpy voices calling out, "Papa, pigs! Papa, me help you!"

It was time to be filled with the sight of my daughter happy and satisfied with her world and the little people who populate it.

I had forgotten the perfume of sleeping babies as they softly breathed out their prayers and conversations with the angels.

 Most of all I had forgotten that home was the inquisitive faces of little people experiencing the world of love that God has put them in.

I went back not to see NY but to visit the people who mean NY to me.