I was sitting in the plane today on my way to IL and thinking. Airplanes are a good place to do that and traveling alone is a good time to do that. I had only been underway for a couple hours and already I was experiencing one of the benefits of travel - having the distance from my everyday life that allows me to see things with different eyes. It's as if I step back a little and suddenly things fall into much sharper focus. Perhaps it's being away from the daily distractions that clutter my field of vision at home. As those distractions fade away, the things that are really important stand out in greater relief on the stage of my life.
It was good to have the time to think about the really important things. Actually, it was only people I was thinking about. How much I love my husband and my family. My friends. How blessed I am to be part of their lives. And how I wish I knew how to love them all better. Maybe this time away will help me learn to do that. Coming back to Illinois is like stepping back into another life - a life I lived in the past. It doesn't quite fit like it used to because I've changed and I see it with different eyes now, too. But there is still so much about it that feels like an old shoe. Or like a beloved home when you finally see it in the distance again.
The trees are bursting with new leaves, the lilacs blooming. Everywhere I look it's achingly green. There's no way to describe how it smells except to say it smells like spring. Wide open spaces and the only thing on the road in front of me was a fertilizer truck as I came down Route 52. I stepped out of the car and heard the spring peepers chanting their hypnotic song. Right now the rain is lashing against the roof outside with the wind as background music. It's a good screen upon which to project my life. And see what comes into focus.
1 comment:
You write very well. I loved this post. I have always moved so often, my whole life (until now), and it has always felt a little bit like my past was on fire behind me, because when I went back, it was never the same because I was never the same. I used to miss having a not-on-fire past, but now I just think that maybe it has helped me keep a looser hold on it all. I'm not sure. I really enjoy thinking about what "home" will mean in heaven, exactly. And I am really enjoying being here for so long, too. This is the longest I've been in one house before, or one town, or one state.
I want to tell you three things in particular I appreciate about you as a friend, since you were thinking about friendship. I really like it that you like the natural world, and show me so much of God's common grace when you point things out I would not see, or would see but not understand.
I also like it that you are very down-to-earth and practical about our humanity, and that you never talk about our lives with Christ as if we're angels or pure spirits of some sort. You make it all feel doable. I think my family has a vaguely gnostic view of the world sometimes, and you have helped my theology a lot in this area just by being pragmatic.
Also, I love your bread. :D
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