Longing for my Land

Happy Birthday to my home and native land.
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!

Hello Friend! 

I’m thinking of you today as I sit under my duvet with my cup of tea and my hot water bottle and fuzzy socks…and parka.  The light in through the window is more reminiscent of fall than summer.  The rain has kept a steady rhythm for about half an hour now.  My girlfriend sent me a Canadian care package a few years back and I have dug it out this morning to keep me company.  Happy Birthday Canada, I miss you.  

Today I’m homesick.

Homesickness is easily defined as a longing for home and family, but I don’t find that definition satisfactory. I have memories of homesickness when I was little that I can still visit if I take the time.  The above definition does not convey the ache in one’s stomach and the inability to breathe that descends when homesickness strikes.  It comes with a taste in my throat and a longing that is akin to grief.  It’s horrible.

Homesickness comes with the desire to be in a place where I feel accepted.  It is the longing to have a burden lifted and to be reunited with a location that is able to erase the pain in my heart.  When I am away from my country, I feel like I am the outsider, away from those who understand me best.  The most effective way I have to combat the unwanted emotion is to imagine myself returning home, visualizing the sights and sound that greet me.

Lately though, I’m beginning to feel something more disturbing than homesickness, it’s a weariness of the enmity and conflict that accompanies my life online.  Not that I go looking for bad news, I don’t, but it seems that bad news is everywhere.  Hardly a web page opens without a broken heart taking centre stage, or the arrival of a story so egregious that it can only be described in terms of evil.  It’s making me long for heaven, not the harp playing heaven where angels eat cream cheese on clouds but the one where bad guys burn, wrongs get righted and tears get dried. 

God willing, most of us are many years from moving into an eternal home where there will be no more crying and hearts will be restored, so in the meantime it makes sense to try to figure out how to live without sobbing into my maple syrup every morning.  (Yep.  Canadians drink maple syrup every morning; it’s how we get so nice.  Our blood is liquid sugar.)  I think that might be where homesickness fits in.

If I assume that others on the planet are trying to live their lives and have somewhat similar goals (a desire to live with minimal strife and a sense of belonging) it makes sense that I would try to be mindful of others.  Though it isn’t fashionable, kindness and respect can go a long way in human interactions.  Love for others isn’t always a feeling, which is why I find scripture so amazing.  When the world would reduce loving others to some kind of cliché, scripture jumps in and gets to the nuts and bolts of how to behave.

 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV 

So I’m praying this week.  That I can use my sense of longing to build a home for myself and others, that alleviates the discord we are all sensing.  That being intentionally kind might undo some of the damage selfishness creates and that in serving others, our hearts may be lightened as we long for home.

xoxKaren

PS. Chickens next week, I've needed time to recover from my last farm visit.