"Five-Minute" (much longer) Friday: Here

Someone once said, "Home is where the heart is," and now it hangs as a canvas painting on our wall by the door.  Since first hearing that saying, I've learned what it means through season after season of transition and changing locations, that home is a Who and not a Where.  But I look at that canvas up on my wall now and my heart tells me it's a restless wanderer. 

I haven't the faintest idea where home is because I can't seem to locate my heart.

This place we've lived in our first year of marriage, at different points, has felt more like home than any other in a long while.  It's been, at times, a much needed refuge.  But now, as it's in the beginning stages of disassembly, as boxes lay scattered and pictures are stripped from the walls, I see it through different eyes.  This place is a cave of sadness, a witness to a thousand private deaths grieved this past year, from which I peer out at the mountains and lake and feel oddly detached from the sun.   Oddly detached from my self.  Within these walls, dreams were sown and watered and neglected, have shot up fragile from the earth and wilted fragile in our hands. 

I moved in with hopes for memories of dancing salsa on our hardwood floors, cooking together in the kitchen, sharing meals at our table, mornings tangled up in bed.  I got a handful of some of these. 

I have more memories of shutting myself in the bathroom or slumped on the kitchen floor alone, a fountain of tears erupting that won't run dry. 

And so, I wish to flee this cave I once called home.  

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There's a longing for home, a taste of it in the presence of the ones I love, a promise of it in the presence of the One who is love.  Yet it's always a flicker, a faded photograph, a memory tucked away.  And maybe there is no need to locate my heart, as much as to locate home in my heart, if I could find a way to access this place, to abide in the peace of belonging to a home that is not flesh and blood and physical address or lover's arms, but here - in Christ, eternal.   

Here, at the epicenter of all this raw pain and death and breaking, is where I finally come to know - really know - that home is Now and Not Yet.  

That home is grace and home is all-consuming fire. 

Home is where I lay my soul to rest each night no matter my address. 

Home is where the slumped ones will rise again, 
     where bitter waters flow into the river of life, 
          and everything that touches the water of this river will live. 

Home is here, where bruised and wilted dreams raise up their heads and stories that seem dead rise from a pile of smoldering ash to tell a more beautiful story.

Here, my soul.  It's right here, all along.

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*Linking up with Lisa-Jo and the Five-Minute Friday community of writers, with this confession: I rarely stick to the five minute rule, because sometimes, I just have so much more inside that needs time to work itself out.  But I love the prompts and the community I have found here.  The prompt this week was "Here," and as you can see, it was a doozy for me.  In case you're wondering, I didn't plan on this coming out, but it did.  And so I try to be brave with what comes to me - "transparency with a purpose" - for I believe this brings healing and hope and freedom, even though I'm shaking in my skin.  So, thank you for being here.  Your presence means a great deal to me.