Someday we are all going home. Not to the address that is listed on our driver’s license or to the place of our childhood memories, but to the place that is etched in our souls from before birth...our place of deepest longing.
I am reminded of this while walking yesterday on a trail that meandered along a nature preserve at low tide.
As we rested on a bench along the trail listening to the spring birds, a woman passed us, her feet crunching in the gravel. Many yards behind her, a husky young man followed with a shuffling gate. His voice cried out to her, the deep voice of a man with the soul of a four year old. “Mama... mama... HOME.” He was focused on her form in front of him and his voice became increasingly insistent. “Mama...HOME!”
We rose to complete our walk and followed some distance behind, assuming they were headed to the same parking lot. Suddenly, she turned and came towards us. From a distance we heard her son cry out with great joy, “Me...Home!” and saw his pace quicken and his shoulders lift.
As he approached, his steps were lighter and his soul seemed happy. “Home! Home! Home!” He almost sang the words. “Home!”
As we passed, I stopped before him. “You won,” I said and put my hands up for a high five. His hands leapt into the air, and he gleefully slapped my hands. His faced glowed with joy.
“Home!”
Then he looked at me and he spread his arms open, his gaze inviting a bear hug. When I reached back, he pulled me close and tight, and I could feel his absolute abandonment to the feeling of gratitude he felt in his heart. He was going home.
He looked at my husband and again spread his arms wide open. Another bear hug ensued, and then he turned to me again for a second hug, this time patting my back. He pulled away and looked me straight in the eye, his face aglow, “Home.”
Mom looked at us and then her son. “You need to thank them for letting you hug them,” she admonished. He looked at me and hugged again. “He loves hugging,” she explained, though we had guessed as much.
I glanced back after they had walked away, watching their two forms disappear on the trail.
So it will be with us someday.
We walk this trail, this life, following a Heavenly parent, calling out from the deepest place of our souls for home. We follow footsteps that guide us in our heart’s cry for peace and rest. We grow weary and unsure if the journey will ever end.
But our journey, like all journeys, will end. Whatever marker on the path is destined for us, we will reach it. And when the time comes for the end of mine, I want to meet it with the joy of the young man on the trail today. I want to experience the overflowing of my heart for having my deepest desires met and open my arms wide to the fullness of an embrace that will welcome me there.
I want to feel my soul’s deepest longing for a home that transcends my earthly experience satisfied at last.
And someday I will.
