Veni, Vidi, Volo In Domum Redire

I came, I saw, I want to go home.

Let's talk about home tonight. What is home and why do people, such as myself, obsess about it so much? According to a wall hanging in my neighbor's house, it is: "No matter what, No matter where, It's only home, If love is there." Okay, love seems to be a great reason to go home, but what kind of love are we talking about here: A. Familial. B. Locational. C. Sentimental. D. All of the above?

This train of thought is stemmed by months of time at home and a weekend visit from one of my school friends that is causing me to approach my home in my perception of his perspective. Would anyone be surprised that the result of this thinking included mental and emotional breakdown?

Me neither, unfortunately. But did it really have to happen at church in front of my friend and peers?

Yes, it did.

How can I even begin to articulate the depth of my emotion? How can I provide any explanation?

I love my home. In my perception, home is the town where I grew up, the water, and my younger three siblings. It is my father's cemetery. It is all of the sights, scents, and sounds that are distinctive to this region. Everything that I have become was the result of my home. Things were hard. Things were terribly difficult. Yet there were the most glorious times. Love, death, and everything in-between. In short, home used to be a place of refuge and happiness.

But that security has passed due to circumstances beyond my control, and somehow I still feel the need to apologize for it because I am embarrassed that I am still having a hard time and want to go home. I don't know where home is anymore, beyond my location. My world is irrevocably crumbling around me and I am powerless to stop it. In addition to being powerless, I am dreamless, passionless, and discouraged. Life is beautiful and wonderful, but it is beyond me why I am here and where I even belong? The worst of it is that I was such a Daddy's Girl that the thing I look forward to the most is getting back home to him. With every particle of my being, I look forward to that day! I came, I saw, and now I can't wait to go home.

"I've had my run, baby I'm done - I want to go home" (Michael Bublé).

Veni, Vidi, Volo In Domum Redire

Nemo Ante Mortem Beatus

Nobody is blessed before his death.

Time is a blessing and a curse, and I have had an over abundance of time in the last six months because of my hip injury and surgery. Despite all of this time to think about life, six months isn't enough time to heal all my wounds. The more I think through things, the more I realize that I don't have a clue as to anything in life. The paradox to my life is that while I have been given everything, I have nothing.

This morning I was on Facebook and one of my friends had posted a link to this amazing song by Brandon Heath that illustrates, to a degree, what I mean. "Wait and See." I dare you to look it up. The basic point of the song is that despite all of the uncertain times during life, "there is hope for me yet, because God won't forget all the plans He's made for me, I have to wait and see - He's not finished with me yet."

There is the promise of everything, but it will take my lifetime for me to have it. Nemo ante mortem beatus. Get it yet?

Yeah, me neither, but I'm trying. That's why I'm here, right?

My experience with this process has often proven to be lonely because it seems that I have to lose everything in order to gain it. This loneliness is somewhat hilarious to me though because of its irony: I am the lonliest in a crowd of people and as happy and content as a lark alone in my driveway on a starlit night.

Case in point:

When the world is cloaked by night
And the clouds are laced by moonlight bright -
Silence of the soul makes plain
A place where peace again may reign.

My lonely path is bedecked by lights -
Glittering beacons from Heaven's heights -
Endowing my way of weary terrain
With tender assurance that life is not vain.

This quiet interlude of peaceful Might
Enraptures my soul with sublimest delight!
Then with the midnight song, like rain,
My soul is cleansed by the heavenly strain:

The "ribbits", and crickets, though hid from my sight,
Boldly encourage my heart to flight!
Flee from the fear of grief and pain -
Flee from the memory of disdain.

For within this sacred Cathedral of Night
My soul may forget Mortality's plight -
And though I'm alone, Angels will entertain
Until with God I shall ever remain.

Everything is backwards, topsy-turvy, and inside-out for me! But "there is hope for me yet, because God won't forget, all the plans He's made for me. I have to wait and see: He's not finished with me yet. Still wondering why I'm here, still wrestling with this fear, but oh He's up to something, and the farther on I go, I've seen enough to know that I'm not even nothing, He's up to something."

He's not finished with me yet.

I have this funny feeling that life I'll hurt a lot more before He's through, so perhaps I lack the gusto with which I ought to declare the motto Dad and I adopted, but no one survives life anyway: Bring It On... And then when I finally die, I will see everything that He has given me.

Nemo Ante Mortem Beatus