Yesterday was my birthday...my 32nd year on this earth was certainly memorable. I spent much of this year just wanting to go home. A longing so deep and so intense, I'm not sure there are words to describe it. As I sit here today in my "home" I find an unsettling in my heart, a whisper, "this isn't really home." It is probably just another level of the grief I need to work through, but it has me thinking...

This isn't my "real" home. I don't really belong here. I am not of this world. The real me, the part of me that makes me "me," is of God and it does not belong on this earth. This longing for a physical home is just a taste of what my spirit is longing for.

As I watch the pain and destruction of the tornadoes in Jan that swept through the mid-west and claimed so many lives, the fires in Colorado that are destroying homes as I type this, the hurts and pains and grief that living life carries with it...I hum this song and hold on to hope.

The Reason for the World by Matthew West

So my prayer for my 33rd year, is to allow myself to feel the longing of my soul for what is eternal, for where I really belong, and to look with peace and joy and hope for the day I get to go home...for real!