Let's trade

My anger for your love.
My jealousy for your joy.
My insecurity for your peace.
My dissatisfaction for your patience.
My selfishness for your kindness.
My bitterness for your goodness.
My inconsistency for your faithfulness.
My abrasiveness for your gentleness.
My irrationality for your self-control.
My flesh for your spirit.
Me for you.
-mo

Thoughts of home

My boots have been heavy the last couple weeks as I have thought a lot about the idea of home. I have just come through a nice, long several weeks in my new house in Brunswick -- the longest stretch without traveling since I moved last August. I have been simultaneously at home and homesick. I miss the city where I spent the last 13 years, the city where, in the truest sense of the words, I grew up. The city where I became who I am. I miss the people who walked with me on that journey. That's the true source of the sickness. I miss my people. I miss my family. I miss having the option of not being lonely.

It's weird to feel anything other than joy when so many things are going so rightly. In fact, I am overwhelmingly excited to be where I am in life and to envision my future. Unless, as I made the mistake of doing a couple weeks ago, I look too far into that future. I have always pictured myself retiring to the small town life in which I grew up. Even when I lived in my city, I knew one day I would return to my town. But, a couple weeks ago, reality shattered that vision. For the first time, I realized there is a very small chance that home will still be there when I am ready to return to it. The town will likely be there, and I love the town. But the town is not home. The people who are there, the love that is there, the comfort of knowing and being known... those are home. If I am fortunate to live to old age, those will have died with my grandparents and with my parents. When I am old, I may have no home to return to. The emptiness of that thought is nauseating. Nauseating and deeply, deeply lonely.