Home?

It is the 4th of July. We are visiting Grandma & Pap Pap in Pennsylvania. The weather is wonderful, warm, and breezy with little to no humidity. Wonderful things are happening! Pap pap took the girls on tractor rides yesterday after he and the Admiral moved several HUGE rocks for the neighbors' rock garden. The girls have spent the today helping Grandma prep flower beds and then planting them. Bright One pounded in the nails that had worked loose on the front walkway.
Tonight we are making camper's stew over the fire, corn on the cob, and strawberry shortcake, mmm! Lots of adventures to have. Fireworks tonight or tomorrow night... It is so hard to decide! Tomorrow we plan to get some lake time on Pap's boat. It has been busy vacation and yet I am relaxed and enjoying myself immensely.

       This place, Home. I haven't lived here for over 15 years. It is still home. I look out at a vivid landscape of more shades of green than you can count and feel a wistful contentment. We go for a drive and I sigh at the rolling beauty as we crest a ridge and look down the wide valley. So much has changed. So much hasn't. The grape vines are in a different place in the orchard, but there are still grape vines. Now my Dad has added blueberry bushes. Mom's asparagus patch has moved too. Friday I walked around with Dad as he shared his dreams for this place. I found it so enjoyable to listen and dream with him. I am so drawn to this place.
     
Yet when I think of my family's home, the house we have lived in since before the girls were born, that place is also home with sweet memories. I look forward to my return home. Sleeping in my own bed, cooking in my own kitchen where everything is where I think it should be, puttering around our space. I look forward to being back there.
      
      So which is really HOME? I guess they both are. In truth, I think that HOME exists in our minds and hearts more than in a place. Home is a state of thinking and being. My folks' place feels so calm and homey because when I am there I have no responsibility, per se. My own place is home because it is mine. I created it together with the Admiral. I have come to believe that home is the place where you are in God's will and being obedient. Even if the physical location is uncomfortable, the spiritual location is so much more important. I frequently argue with the Lord and tell Him with the way I think things should be. But when I bend to his will and choose to follow His leading, then and only then do I come HOME. The sense I have when I am at my parents' house is only a shadow of the feeling I have when I am walking in obedience to Him.



Lord, Guide me. Give me the bravery to choose you and be obedient to your will every day.