one foot in and one foot back

I went back to Florida this month.

Nearly two years I've been away, and coming up on three since I actually lived there, in the creamy golden twilight of Sebring.

I am glad that the first return visit was over, and the torrential emotions that came with it. Still, it was hard to be back, but not fully; to know that I only had a week to step back into the many relationships I formed there made it that much harder to jump in with both feet and set myself up for the inevitable pain of yet another goodbye.

But I did, as best I could... and as always, it was worth it.

I didn't know when I first moved to Florida three years ago that my sense of what is home would change so much. It's like my concept of a perfect home, that idealistic place I thought I had achieved as a child, completely shattered when I left it - and all the broken pieces were thrown to the four winds, never to be reassembled fully this side of heaven.

At first there was only pain, and I hated it. But it has become a part of me now, and in some ways, I like it. Whether I'm in Olympia or Goldendale or Martinsburg or Sebring, there is a constant pricking in my heart that I have grown to welcome - a reminder that I am only a visitor in a foreign land, waiting to be called back to my true native country.

And even while I wait here on earth, my heart is fuller. My circle is bigger. My support system is stronger. My God is greater.