I Hear It Calling

The road home is a long one that's for sure. I wish when I get there my Granny and Paw Paw would be waiting for me. But they won't physically, though that almost doesn't matter. I know that their lessons to me, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, are what matter most. I'm here now, sitting in the place I call home, yet my heart is saying it's time to go. It's time to return to the place that you need and which needs you most. The things that I have always loved are there and are the same things that have always loved me in return. I have come to realize that it isn't a physical, human love which satisfies me most, though it is longed for just the same. It's that spiritual happiness that makes us feel whole. I don't have that here. I'm filling a roll, though not one I was prepared for. I can't teach my boys about happiness here because here it is about avoiding chaos and hiding in the shadows in hopes of not being noticed. I want them to feel alive, to experience life, not question it. It is shameful that it takes some of us so long to realize what means the most and to recognize our limits of giving if the return is not equal or greater. It's been a good run here, but I am almost done. I'm ready to go home.

Friends Will Bring You Home if You Know Where Home Is..

Don't we all wish we had a "redo" at some point in life? I find myself more and more these days looking back at that picture of the long road home. There's so much peace in it yet it nearly drives me to tears to think of all the memories that could have been. How could I have ran from something like that, thinking there was no hope, nothing left? Too bad hindsight is 20/20 and we can look back and rationalize the decisions we've made and the ones we didn't. There is hope though. In all the times I have felt all hope was lost, true friends, old and new, have risen to the occasion and pulled me out of the depths of self-pity. Why waste this wonderful lifetime on myself? One day I will grab my kids by the hands and walk them down the road home, thanks to the inspiring words of true friends who care with generosity. Most things, I am learning, are not forever, and perhaps they were never meant to be such. There are a few things, though, that will outlast our most vivid ideals and remind us of hope and of love and of inspiration and of the things that rooted us in our very being. Home, and all the things that define it, may not pertain to specific geographical location as much as a state of being, as in total content. Realizing where home is and why you need to be there can be as scary as leaving the geographic home. Returning to it would be near mortifying if it weren't for the sincerity of a friend who can reinforce and validate your strongest feelings of why you need to be back there in the first place. My friends, one day I will be walking down that long road again, remorseful of ever having left in the first place.