Coming home

“But it was pure, this love that I was feeling.  It was godly.  I looked around the darkened valley and I could see nothing that was not god.  I felt so deeply, terribly happy.”  (edited a little from an Elizabeth Gilbert quote)

I was quite homesick while we were traveling through Southeast Asia.  Not the whole time, mind you, but enough that some days were pretty tough.  I would close my eyes and escape to the only place I wanted to be.  My daydreams were always the same.  My mind would go over every detail of the farm until I had a perfect little map of home in my head.  The scene was usually one of two seasons – early summer or mid fall.  Bright blue skies, white fluffy clouds, green grass, fields of soybeans and corn and that deep smell of earth and rain.  Slightly muted blue sky, the Woods full of turning leaves, Dad harvesting corn in front of the house, corn leaves swirling around the yard and that deep smell of harvest that I’ve never found words to explain.  You can imagine my disappointment when I got home; all I saw were cloudy skies, barren earth, rain and felt a cold chill in the air.  Regardless, I cried until I had nothing left when I saw my Western horizon.  Nothing had changed.  The view that has always been the window to my heart, the place where I feel closest to Mother Earth, the Moser legacy I will carry on that lives in the soil; it was all there.  I was home.

A week ago I was sitting on the porch just after supper reading a book when I looked up and realized, “This is it.”  This is what my heart aches for when I’m away; this is what I’ve been in communion with my whole life.  The entire world had turned a dusky combination of rose, orange and purple.  The light was soft and mellow.  A slight breeze was rustling leaves and carrying bids’ songs.  Since I was a child, I have always felt that the world dramatically slows down at dusk; everything seems to stop for a while.  It was calm, peaceful and completely beautiful.

It’s in these moments that I can’t imagine being anywhere else:

Sitting with my Uncle at church and spending the whole service grinning and laughing.  I have missed him.

Watching my cousin kick butt in his 800-meter race at the District Finals to come in second.  My heart was just about bursting ‘cause I was so proud of him.

 

While watching Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with Mom, sister and the Grandparents, Grandpa quipped while the tenor was singing about his ardent love – “Remember those days, dear?”  ”You never said it like that!”  ”I was more of a bass.”

A few weeks ago was D’s Graduation party and ceremony.  At one point I was able to stop serving and look around the fellowship hall.  So many people whom also love and support D.  I was almost overcome.  I love connections.  Seeing J and J sitting down to talk to Grandma and Grandpa – knowing that they both went to school with their children and now J’s daughter is dating cousin D.  It was almost too much.  You know that feeling when joy is sometimes mixed with a kind of painful ache?  So much happiness in one singular moment that you feel the only way it could be released would be to cry?

“I felt so deeply, terribly happy.”

 

It’s good to be in this place.

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