Going Home.
I’m going home!
I’m almost there.
Home.
I can smell it before I ever see it, the briny smell of the sea carried on the cool ocean breeze. It has been 15 years but it is as if not a day and yet it is forever and a day.
Home
The light is fading and yet I feel a desperate need to see it again. We make our way down the road and the local traffic is thick.
I am feeling desperate- in a sort of panic to get there before the sun sinks into its depth leaving nothing but the inky blackness of night and the sound of the waves hitting the shore.
Going Home
We turn down a street with ocean access, it is congested with people coming and going slowing our progress. A car pulls out of the on-street parking, another waits to slip in the empty space. Teens with surfboards and wetsuits walk down the sandy sidewalk talking excitedly about their perfect wave.
I’m Going Home
Before we can even park the car I hit the button to unlatch my seatbelt and open the door. I slide out of the passenger seat and the girls follow my lead leaving Mr. Cottage to park the car. I start to run for the sand. It is cool and January but I pull off my shoes and run for it – warm in comparison to the negative three degrees we have left behind.
There it is! The sun is sinking, but my feet are enveloped by the coolness and the salty breeze is in my hair. The sound of the sea filling my ears.
I Am Home.
Tears come unbidden – what a fool I am! But it is a homecoming an embrace- a welcome home, I wonder- how I ever left… even more, how will I let it go again? I take a deep breath and prepare myself for the brevity of this visit.
Children with their parents play on the shore, their laughter comes in spurts and sputters but is quickly carried away on the salty breeze.
Oh, how I long for home, not the place I now call home but my childhood home.
The place of laughter and friends, my mom and my dad. If only I could walk the short distance home and walk in the door.
“Mom! I’m home! I’m here! I’m back!”
If only I could hear their voices and throw my arms around them.
If only I could hear the radio playing their favorite music as I round the corner.
Smell my favorite meal cooking in the kitchen.
Oh, I long for their embrace but they are gone.
I remember why I am here.
I sit in the cool sand, tears burning my eyes and remember we are here to say goodbye.
We are bringing you back to lay to rest with dad. Oh mom! How can you be gone?
The waves crash again.
Like a whisper on the wind, the verse comes to my mind.
“ Now we do not want you to be uninformed, believers, about those who are asleep [in death], so that you will not grieve [for them] as the others do who have no hope [beyond this present life]. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again [as in fact He did], even so God [in this same way—by raising them from the dead] will bring with Him those [believers] who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For we say this to you by the Lord’s [own] word, that we who are still alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will in no way precede [into His presence] those [believers] who have fallen asleep [in death]. For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the a]archangel and with the [blast of the] trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain [on the earth] will simultaneously be caught up (raptured) together with them [the resurrected ones] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord! Therefore comfort and encourage one another with these words [concerning our reunion with believers who have died].” 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 amp
Then I realize that my longing is not for my childhood home.
It is not for the salty sand beneath my feet.
Put the home my soul longs for.
Home
The place mom has been carried by her Lord and now waits for those she loves to join her.
No more death, no more pain.
The home she longed for.
Absent from the body, at home with the Lord.
“Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMP), Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. lockman.org”
Read our other posts here:
- 7 Powerful Ways To Keep Trusting God In Difficult Times
- Downpour: Learning From Life’s Storms Paperback
- The Powerful Story Of Jesus Calming The Storm
- Hearing God’s Voice In The Chaos
- Finding Peace In Chaos | 3 Powerful Ways To Find Peace In The Midst Of The Storm
- Keeping The Faith When Life Doesn’t Go The Way We Hoped
- A Grandmother’s Legacy
