Home Again, Home Again

We're home. It's amazing how "home" you can be, to the point that all the comings and goings of the last week and a half seem like a dream. Winterfest seems like it was months ago. Beaver Creek seems like another life, i.e. was I ever really bundled up in a sleigh going up a mountain in the snow to a cabin for dinner? And yet, I have pictures and memories. There are memories of the people we met from all over the world; Argentina, New Zealand, Slavakia, Switzerland and Holland to name a few. There are pictures of huge massive icicles hanging off of eaves, scenic mountain vistas and mounds of snow on rooftops and on rocks in icy cold streams. And now, back here in my home on my street in my neighborhood in my little town in my big state in my country it seems like I never left this room. Strange.

But I am back. I'm back entrenched in everyday life. My 14 year old is very much alive and living and keeping up with him is a full time job. Sunday night a small group of old and new friends swarmed upon a new home purchased by one of our precious young couples and we blessed it and anointed it and we blessed them after which they blessed us as our hearts were opened up and we poured out upon each other the love and comfort we have received and this young couple gave all of us with children the gift of hope. Then yesterday I went to a new friend's house to learn how to quilt. My friend is 81 years old. Her name is Lyndele. Millie was there and so was Wanda. As we sat with our quilting projects on our laps with our needles poking and pricking the most amazing things happened. Stories were told. Wisdom was shared. Prayers were prayed. Relationships were formed or deepened. And love invaded the room. I could have been in a log cabin on a prairie in the wild west a hundred or more years ago. But I was in my friend's home on her street in her neighborhood in our little town in our big state in this country sharing life with women who have really lived and are willing to be honest and open in an effort to comfort and strengthen each other in the knowledge of how incredibly loved we each are by the Father who makes all these experiences possible in so short a time as this.

Life is for living and loving and sharing and growing. If we could only get outside of ourselves and look past our present circumstances and into the eyes of those God puts around us and see Him in them or see them as He sees them, then we will be truly living. I can't help but think that if you thought you were looking into God's eyes you might act completely differently than if they were the eyes of a stranger. Or if you were seeing each one as God's child, how you might treat them with more respect. If we could know each other as God's precious ones, how much more like Jesus could we be? I want to live like this. I saw it in action in a cirlce of new friends yesterday and two weekends ago in a group of 90+ teens and adults on a journey and then again on the slopes of a mountain last week. They say home is where your heart is - maybe we need to start carrying our hearts around with us wherever we go.