This is Home

One week ago at this time, I pulled into the driveway of my childhood home. Just even thinking about it now my spirit moves into a realm of peace and contentment. Of course, things always seem better and more nostalgic when we look back at them and we don't always remember the negative of it, but pulling into the driveway, nothing really felt better at that moment in time.

I knew I needed to go home. I wanted to. I hadn't felt that way in a very long time. The longing in my heart to be home. To be around all that was/is familiar to me. Home. I wanted it so badly.

I needed a week of healing. Of restoration. Of staring some really ugly things in the eye and not allowing them to define me anymore.

These things are all easier said than done.

I close my eyes and just wish to go back to those moments of peace. Of waking up in the morning and seeing the sunshine fall into my room. It really did feel like summer, for the first time in many years. Summer meant release. It meant a sigh of relief. I haven't felt that in years. I've waited for it. I've searched for it. And last week on my parents' back porch, I felt it. The word "summer" rolled in and around my mind like an old friend. It came as I sat and stared at the big trees in the backyard, realizing that somethings never really do change.

I'm continuing to search for that same feeling of pulling into the driveway or walking down a sandy beach. It was the same. It was home.

One of my favorite moments last week was running out to the park. It was sunny. It was just me and Switchfoot blaring in my earbuds. "I'm finally free again" were the words that pounded in my ears as I pounded the pavement. I felt at home. I felt peace. The same kind that I felt running into the ocean with the wind in my face only a few short months ago.

I said I would write about last week. I said I would write down all these thoughts that I had. All these rumblings. These stirrings. These scars.

One of the things that prompted me even more to take the trip home were the dreams I had leading up to this trip. So vivid. So real. I felt every emotion as if I was really living it. And it was full of all these places of home. The gym, the playground, the football field. Most of them were haunting. And most made me feel some of the most awful feelings I had ever felt and will ever feel. Shame. Guilt. Unworthiness. And I went running back to the place that gave me those feelings. But I knew I had been running far too long from these feelings.

By Providence, I was reading something that should have been read nearly a month ago. It was beautifully written by one of my favorite authors how our past leads to our future. Her words were that we must not mark a big X on the messy parts of our lives, even the ones that are too painful but that we have to trust that they are a part of our story and help make us whole. And really, who wants to look at years of their life as wasted or put a big black line through them? Every year we have is a gift, it's precious, even the really really really really really hard ones. And I've had those years. I have. I have lived them, or barely lived through them. But last week I learned that I need to accept each part of my story and know that each page that was written has made me who I am today.

There were painful years I didn't come home. I wanted to be as far away as possible. It was because everything there hurt so badly. It reminded me only of pain. Of those moments where you feel your heart break. All I could think of were early morning phone calls delivering bad news and all things I knew as stability being ripped out from under me. The person that I clung to as my safe place was crumbling and I didn't know how to handle it. And I tried to tell them that I was hurting, that I was worried, that I was anxious. I'm not upset with how they reacted; I know they were scared, too.

It was because of this and other moments that I just couldn't go back as much. And then later on, I just wanted to be so far separated from the people I grew up with. There are so many times I still feel the shame and unworthiness that I felt as a teenager. And I'm beginning to recognize that there are people in my life that push those same buttons now. And when those people appear, I feel threatened. I feel as though everything I've worked hard for and tried to grow from has come roaring back at me with vengeance. Mean girls just turn into mean women. Hateful and demeaning words from men still do the same damage they did years ago on a wooden basketball court. Now they just come from men sitting in wooden pews.

I wish I could go back to the little girl with her backpack and her books and her journal. I wish I could tell her that it's all going to be okay. That the words of those mean girls don't mean a thing. That the insecurity of a grown male does not make you insecure. But that you can be brave. You ARE brave. You can be who you were created to be. Read books. Write and tell stories. Dream so very big. Don't let anyone steal your joy. You are precious, dear one. You can be the girl that you read about in books. You can grow up to be that girl. You don't have to settle for mediocre. You can live big where you were planted. You can still dream of places for adventure from your own backyard under the light of the stars. Shooting for the moon isn't enough for you and that's simply okay. Just be, dear one. Just be.