I Just Wanna Go Home...

      I Just Wanna Go Home... 

       I have worked as an ICU nurse for the past 10 years. I have seen people in some of the worst moments of their lives. Tragedy, accidents, illness, injury, death. Held their hands, kneeled at their bedside as they fount for their lives. 

       It has always amazed me how no matter who it is, no matter the age, the gender, the nationality...at that moment when someone is at their lowest, when all is spent, and hope seems gone...all they say is...

"I just want to go home."

No one wants to be in a foreign place when they are in pain, when they are hurting or scared. We want the comforts of home. The safety it brings. Surrounded by our family and security. We long for home when we are at our lowest. 

       As someone who LOVES to travel the world I can say that even if you are in the most amazing island, the most glorious or fulfilling destination...there will always come a time when the longing for home will creep up on you. 

      As a Mommy I sometimes hear my precious child say those same words when he is especially tired, or if he gets a boo boo, or if he is feeling sad. "I just want to go home!" I have even heard my own voice echo his sentiments. At those points in your life when you are broken, empty, powerless, lost. Crouched on the floor, unable to lift yourself up by your own power. Sure that your eyes should be empty of tears as they have all fallen into your hands...yet there is always more. I have heard my own voice, foreign to my own ears cry "I just want to go home, please take me home." Awkward as I am sitting on my own floor, in the safety of my own house.

      Yet, there is a yearning in our hearts for home. For that place that holds safety, where the weight lifts off your chest and you can suck air into your starving lungs. Where you will wake up and realize it is a bad dream and you are protected, safe, understood. The sentiment of home that we yearn for is not really held in within the beams and drywall of our house. It is deeper, harder, longer, stronger than that.

       I realized something as I drove home from work tonight. It was dark, the snow was falling heavily and the roads were slippery beneath my cars tires. 

I want to go home

      I walked around outside my hospital at work today. A thin sweater on despite the freezing wind and heavily falling snow. I wanted to wake up. To feel the cold and flakes fall against my cheeks and have the icy cold break me out of this bad dream we are in. But alas, it was not to be. This snowy world is reality. The chill of DIPG is here for real. Our hearts long to be home. Yet, even when I arrived home, I still felt the yearning.

      I realized that it makes sense to me now. We long for home even when we are in our house because THE WORLD IS NOT OUR HOME. We are foreigners in an inhospitable world. Our hearts long for the safety of Jesus' arms. The assurance of no more tears, no more DIPG, no more oncology units, or radiation masks. No more port access pain, or prognosis talks. No more swallowing tears to keep a brave face in front of the other kiddos...

       Home. Though I don't have a physical vision of what Heaven looks like, I somehow think our hearts can see it still. Somehow in those moments of fear and pain, on the floor with our demons attacking, our hearts can distill the clutter and sees our real home. Where we belong for real. It is in those moments we need to hold onto that feeling. Remember that this feeling is the promise of home to come. Feel it. Let it surround you and fill you with bittersweet longing. May we forever yearn for our true home with Jesus.

Revelation 21:4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 22:1-5  No longer will there be anything curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. 

Philippians 3:20-21 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ