Home Sweet Home

For the past 6 1/2 years I have been a part of two homes.  My birth home-New Castle, PA and my newly established home-Phoenix, AZ.  For years I have been teaching my east coast family about scorpions, haboobs, winter grass and other Arizona phenomenons that seem so alien to us and at the same time teaching my west coast family and friends about snow, pierogies, and a little Pittsburgh-ese!

This weekend I had the opportunity to "go home".  I flew out Thursday night and when I stepped off the plane and out into the frigid cold...I was home.  For 18 years I grew up there and created thousands upon thousands of memories.  I am completely comfortable there.  At my parents house I know where everything is, help myself to the fridge, and even check their mail.  At my grandparents house, I go in without knocking, plop down in a chair, and make myself "at home".  There is something so welcoming and so refreshing about being in a place so familiar. 

Although our lives have been lived thousands of miles apart for years, this weekend it was as if I was never gone.  We played cards, laughed about old memories, ate at my favorite restaurants, and even went to a high school football game.  It was so good to "be home". 

But all the while I was in PA, I truly missed my new home.  I thought about my bed, my couches, my tv, my car, my job, my friends, and my life in AZ.  As the plane started to descend into the Valley of the Sun, I smiled as I saw Saquaro Lake where just last month my parents and Griff and I took a boat ride, I thought back to my college graduation as we zoomed past ASU stadium, and looked out over the thousands of houses and very happily knew that MY house was amoungst them.  I was home.

It is not always easy to blend two distinct lives together.  Where I grew up in PA and where I know call home in AZ are about as different as fire and ice.  But, I was shaped into the person I have become by growing up where I did, surrounded by people who loved me, and I continue to grow into that person today as Griff and I navigate through life here in Gilbert.

All this talk about home brings me to my real point of this blog...thankfully for me I have one more home.  Somewhere that no matter what happens I am welcome.  Somewhere that no matter what I have done I can come back.  Somewhere that no matter how long you have been gone you will be welcomed with open arms.  Home in the arms of Christ. 

I started this blog in an effort to help me grieve the loss of our baby.  So I try to relate back to that in all my blogs.  At the time we lost the baby I needed to "go home".  Not to PA, not to my house in Gilbert, but home.  Home to Christ.  Home to where he would welcome me with open arms and care for me in a way that no one else could.  Home to a Father who loves His children more than anything and always will.  When I allowed myself to realize that I will never be more at peace and more comfortable anywhere but there, I knew that I was right where I belonged...I was home.