homesick

I learned a new word today: hiraeth.  It's a Welsh word that describes a kind of homesickness; a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia and wistfulness.  Its more like a homesickness for a home you can never return to.  That perfectly describes what I've been feeing the past couple of weeks.  Our 'nomad' life of the past 18 months is wearing on me.  My frayed edges are showing.  It's not pretty.  Aside from the fact that we sold the home our children lived all their teen years in 20 months ago, we're also currently squatting in a friend's home while they winter in Florida.  (I don't even have the comfort of my own 'stuff'.)  Added to that, our children are all grown and building their own homes now.  So I'm homesick for a home I can never return to. That's hiraeth.

There's a constant yearning, a low-level anxiety in my gut.  Like when you're in line for a roller coaster ride that someone talked you into - but your'e not really excited about.  You just want to get on the ride and get it over with.  I'm feeling displaced.  But not just displaced.  It's like having one foot solidly on ground and the other foot dangling over a precipice: not yet settled in a new place.  So maybe I'm not just feeling displaced, I'm feeling unplaced.  Without a home: home-less.

My first-born, fix-it personality naturally wants to just find a place already! Pick one and settle. There might not be anything wrong with that plan.  But I keep resisting that urge to 'make a home' because I'm seeing in myself a scary propensity to make 'home' an idol.  I could devote countless hours to Zillow and HGTV.  Many more hours than I spend in search of the Word - and a deeper understanding of my God. And each time I start mentally whining about being 'homeless' I'm convicted again about the ridiculousness of that statement.  I'm living in a gorgeous home on a beautiful lake with more solitude and sunshine than I've had in years; while thousands of refugees flee their homes, leaving behind memories and precious belongings and in some cases, family.  Their pain doesn't make mine less true.  But it puts it in perspective.

Am I desiring home more than I desire God's presence?  Am I homesick for my children and family more than I'm homesick for intimacy with God?  These are the questions I'm asking myself today.  (Is my fantasizing about moving to Waco and having Chip and Joanna Gaines flip a dream house for me wrong?)  I'm not sure. I guess it depends on how much of my mental energy I expend in that fantasizing.  And how much I allow dissatisfaction to taint my heart.

I want to make my 'home' in the presence of God - and His presence in me.  I want home to be less a physical location, and more an inner connectedness with my Father.  I'm not there yet.  But I'm learning how to be content right where I actually am.  The undercurrent of anxious anticipation is still there.  But as I daily give that desire over to God, I have to believe He's building His desires within me.  You know what my heart wants God.  Help me want what You want more.  

inexplicable peace

My friend is burying her son today.  
That's wrong on so many levels.  No parent should have to bury their child.  It's not the way God intended.

I don't know how to comfort a heart that's breaking.  Peace that 'passes understanding' seems not to have a place in this kind of grief.  Like it shouldn't have a place.  Like maybe experiencing peace in the midst of tragedy is dishonoring in some way. 






But I don't think peace means your heart doesn't break. Maybe it just means your mind can stop racing; your teeth can unclench because you sense God's presence with you there. In the middle of the pain.


If we who love Him are really Jesus' hands and feet, then every embrace, every word, every tear, touch and look of compassion is God Himself: holding you.  Grieving with you. Comforting. That picture, that reality, makes it a little easier to breathe. 
Maybe that's what peace is.

God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.  He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. 
~2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Feeling Grace

I don't know how I should feel today.  I am surrounded by grieving, hurting people.  Cancer, disease, inexplicable death.  Even the sky is sad today.  We arrived home last night after 10 days driving over 2000 miles to sit in hospital rooms and waiting rooms with family who are suffering: an 18 year old nephew battling 2 types of cancer; a 42 year old brother recovering from open heart surgery; a mother who lives with no feeling in her fingers or toes and little hope of that getting better.

Today, we drive through patches of fog as we go to sit with our dear friends and just be.  There are no words.  No words to explain why their 25 year old son died suddenly.  No words to express our sorrow to his wife of less than a year.  No way to begin to answer their hearts cry, why God allowed it to happen.  I ache for them in ways I've not ached before.  And stop by to hug my own 24 year old son a little tighter than usual.

And yet, there's a real and uncommon peace.  A sense that this wrenching grief won't last forever. That someday we'll see the purpose in the pain.  Or maybe we won't, but it won't matter anymore. But that feeling seems wrong.  Seems not to honor the ones who are gone.  

So I don't know how I should feel today.

I'm simultaneously sick to my stomach but quiet in my mind; weeping over loss yet hopeful for the future.  Choosing to trust in the goodness of the Father when everything around me points to pain.  I have SO much to be thankful for.  And I feel unworthy.  But I'm wondering if this is exactly what grace feels like.  To be 'pressed on all sides but not crushed, hunted down but never abandoned by God.'  Is His grace best understood in tragedy?  Does He show His innate goodness not in cocooning us from the realities of our fallen life, but in His tangible presence with us in the mess? And in the promise of rescue one day soon?   That's where my hope lies on this dreary, grief-filled day. He is here.  And that is enough.