Wednesday, December 17, 2008

That Chris Rea song

Thomas Wolfe said you can't go home again. 

Sir Henry Bishop wrote home sweet home. 

Tomorrow i'll find out which is more appropriate.

It seems almost unbelievable to me that it's over five months since i was in England, and over four since i saw my family. It really has gone by in a flash. In an odd but very real way it feels funny to talk about somewhere else as home. I've really fallen in love with eastern North Carolina, a place totally unlike any other. That really wasn't in the plan. But it's happened. I remember walking along the canal in Reading with Sean, what seems like a life time ago and telling him that however much i'd fight it there would come a day when all i wanted to do in the world was to pack up and come home, that i'd just want to sit in the kitchen at my parents house, read the paper and talk to my mum as she did the ironing.

That day never came. I've never really been homesick. Which hopefully will make going home for three weeks a lot easier.

It'll be odd though. I'll expect it to be as it was on 10th July when i left. But it'll be 19th December. Relationships will have been forged and broken, people will have grown up and stumbled, friends will have moved, i'll no longer have a place where i used to belong.

But thats really ok. I'm supposed to be here. It's hard, and lonely at times, but i wouldn't swap the opportunities i've had at church here, and i certainly wouldn't swap how close i am to Rachel for anything in the world. It'll feel like half of me is missing when i leave without her. This is also good. 

And you know what, i'll never really come home. Not until Jesus returns or i die. Then i'll enter Heaven, the world of love. With no goodbyes, no curtailments, no broken relationships, no awkward moments between old friends, just joy and worship forever and ever and ever.

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