Home is where, exactly?

Lord? Are you there? It's me, April.

I know I haven't been talking to you about the house thing lately, I sorta figured you were tired of my incessant whining. I envision you clenching the bars on the Pearly Gates and banging your heavenly head against it while screaming to Saint Peter, "Why?! Why won't she just do what I want her to do?!!!"

So, here's the thing God, I think I may not have been paying attention when you told me where you want me to be. Is it here? In Missouri? Because my heart just really isn't here, I'm pretty sure I left it a few hundred miles west. I'm trying, really, I am. I've been trying for eight years to make this place my homeland. I have moments when I start to feel all warm and cozy here and then the chills take over again.

I feel like we moved to Missouri to be spiteful. I think we thought there would be family here, there's not. I think we thought we would find that niche, we haven't. I still feel like I'm a visitor, an outsider, the person that doesn't really know how to act, what to say, where to be, what to do. I don't feel like that when I go back to Kansas.

When I'm in Kansas I immediately connect to people. I feel comfortable walking in my shoes. It's all so familiar, pleasant, comforting. I speak their language.

Lord, I long for community. I know we've shot ourselves in the foot many times by commuting to a church twenty miles away, home schooling our children, living in an interstate community where people drive to work miles away. Are you nodding your head in agreement, Lord? Are you telling me to wake up? Smell the chicken shi...uh, crap?

Is it me? Am I just not accepting what you have given me? How many times have I looked around and mumbled, "What the heck am I doing here?” I never did that in Kansas. How many times did we silently struggle with packing up and moving back? But, we stuck it out thinking You had brought us here. Were you saying go back? Was it so hard because You thought eventually we would open our eyes and see the blinking neon arrow pointing back home?

I don't feel like I'm living the life that you gave me. I'm in a foreign land. Is it too late to go back? Can I get a do-over?

Am I suffering from comparison? Is my sinful nature getting the best of me? Can you shut off my desire to be elsewhere? Can you take away my fantasy of finding a home that fulfills all my desires? Can you show me where the heck you want us to be?

Lord, I'm trying to put it all in your hands. I'm trying to see the bright side, which is difficult when I live in a big, long, dark, brown, turd that I can't call my own. Show me something Father, this time I'll try to listen with my eyes on you.

Your ever questioning servant,

April