finally home

How to say it? I've been afraid of coming home. Afraid of looming hours and unplanned wandering and loneliness.

And I started the drive home last night and I asked it out loud for the first time, maybe acknowledging it for the first time: Papa, why do I have such a strong aversion to coming home? 

Approaching the railway intersection, between the cracks of trees and sky I saw lights illuminating buildings and space and I was met with a deep feeling of familiarity that I haven't experienced in years.

It was the feeling of coming home. Of knowing something as home. The realisation that you are returning, that you have finally returned, to a place you knew a long time ago, perhaps in a dream.

I woke several times in the early hours of morning and each time, dread would breathe its grey dust in through some broken, open wound I've got exposed here, threatening me with empty.

Each time, the word would rise inside me,

Home,

it's edges painted gold,

so deeply satisfying the longing inside me.

I am constantly focused on how I need to know God more and be closer to him, and last night I heard him speaking to me, like waves that keep coming,

saying to accept, appreciate, and be present to where we are now, to where I am with this God who is Three,

Father, Spirit, Son,

this family with arms always open.

Home is something that exists. It's a place where you live.

Mulling over Jesus' words in the pages of John, I remember how I always ask him, and what is real life? What is eternal life? 

There is plenty of room for you in my Father's home. If that weren't so, would I have told you that I'm on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I'm on my way to get your room ready, I'll come back and get you so you can live where I live.  

I will talk to the Father, and he will provide you with another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can't take him in because it doesn't have eyes to see him, doesn't know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!

I will not leave you orphaned. I'm coming back. In just a little while the world will no longer see me, but you're going to see me because I am alive and you're about to come alive. At that moment you will know absolutely that I'm in my Father, and you're in me, and I'm in you. 

Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can't produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is -- when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples. 

I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you'll remain intimately at home in my love. That's what I've done -- kept my Father's commands and made myself at home in his love.

Home,
is where nothing is missing.