GOING HOME

Written by Luz Leigh –July 2007

      Going Home. Don’t those words conjure up happy memories?

      Maybe you are a member of the military. You have been serving your country on foreign soil and now Uncle Sam has said, “Go home. Your tour is finished.” You have thoughts of your wife, your children, your parents and others who are close to your heart.

      You are a college student who has completed that first year away from home. The excitement of leaving your parents’ home and their house rules has long ago slipped into the back side of your mind. You have had that first fling of freedom. You now welcome the thought of sleeping in your old room, waking to the smell of breakfast mom will be preparing. 

      The words “going home” means the long distance trucker will be pulling out of Spokane, Washington, tomorrow at daybreak and driving cross country to Charleston, South Carolina. He will make two stops on his way to deliver goods and pick up a new load as he continues his trek toward that little house where his wife and three teenage children wait for him. Those teens need their daddy’s presence, so he has agreed that this will be the final long trip. He has found employment nearer home. Those long miles seem to get longer the closer he comes to home, but his heart is happy.

      When I let the memories of the past began to smother me, I drive to the old home place where I was born. Home. Although I’ve been away for nearly thirty-five years, it is still where my heart longs to be on many occasions. There is a yard swing under the big oak tree....the tree where my daddy put the rope swing for me when I was barely a year old. Later my children would swing from that same limb. Different rope; same tree. There is also a front porch on the home that now sits where the old house once stood. I can sit either on the porch or in the swing and let my mind wander back to those happier days. The days when, as a child, I felt the security of my parents’ home. Or as an adult when I lived there with my husband and our children. That old house seemed to have held for generations the love of those who called it home.

      But the most wonderful “going home” will come when I make my last journey. I will leave this earth with its pain, sickness, heartaches, fears and anything else that the devil throws at us. I will take flight on wings of angels to my heavenly home where my Savior waits for me. The throng of loved ones will be there to greet me; my beloved husband who made the trip almost twelve years ago; my mother and my daddy. And there will be the Apostles Paul and Peter. I want to ask those two saints some questions to which only they hold the answers.

      Do you know why I know angels will carry me on their wings? I have an enormous fear of flying, so my daddy will have petitioned our heavenly Father to give me peace as I fly away to my eternal home. I know Daddy and my husband are not angels, but allow me to indulge in a dream. What if, when that time comes, I look up and there they are bidding me to come to the Father. I always trusted those two men, so in death I would like to trust them to make my flight a pleasant one.

      So, “going home” can mean many things, but all should bring happy thoughts.