Take Me Lord

Home...just the word gives me a warm, mushy feeling inside.

I have fond memories of home; for me it was hot chocolate chip cookies when I got off the school bus, a mother who took care of me when I was sick, a father who would sit beside my bed and talk to me during my difficult and rebelous teenage years, a brother who sat beside my bed, watched me sleep, and cleaned up ????? (well you know) after an evening of way too much fun. It's decorating the Christmas tree as a family, it's trying to fit 30 people at the table when it only seats 8 on Thanksgviving Day, it's the hugs you received after a break with your first boyfriend, it was waking up to Sizzlean everymorning when Dad was off, it was the countless bloodsuckers removed from my legs and feet everytime I went to the lake to swim. Home! It was all the times I would complain I had no clothes and Mom would step into my closet and say, "just where this and when you get home from school we'll go shopping", it was the smell of homemade doughnights frying, and the it was the day my Dad took me out to drive for the very first time.

Home! It was a feeling of belonging, a placed I felt accepted, it was a place I knew I could be myself no matter what, it was a place where love abounded and I knew, no matter what the circumstance, I could always go HOME!

I am not sure why sometimes in life you go through seasons where that feeling of home is just gone. You feel displaced. No matter where you go and no matter what you do you just don't feel home. It's like everything that you once knew is now gone...you search and search and yet still do not find and your heart just longs for that feeling of home to return. A place to belong, a place you feel accepted and a place where love abounds.

I guess it's during these times that, for me at least, I find myself wanting to run. I want to run away from everything that doesn't feel right and find the thing or place that brings that feeling back. I think if we were all honest with ourselves and each other we would find we that all want to be accepted, loved and feel like we belong.

The longer you walk through this season it seems your heart aches even more until you finally get on your knees and cry out to God. You want answers; why is this happening, what have I done wrong, and my favorite, am in the right place, am I in God's will?

For me, the answer is always the same, God tells me over and over, "Yes, your in the right place", but for some reason I keep asking the same questions. I want that feeling and I guess if I had the feeling than I would be okay and then God says, "Sometimes you can't go on what you FEEL". OUCH!!! And I admit I don't like that because I want to FEEL because I think we are so programed that if feels good than its okay, but if it doesn't it can't be okay.

Might I be so bold to say that sometimes God brings us to places where you feel so along and are just so uncomfortable that you feel your sitting on a cactus. I don't know why, He just does. I know when I read the story about the children of israel wandering through the dessert they didn't always have happy feelings, but God was there and He provided for them many times and there was a purpose to the dessert experience. I guess I, like many, just want to see the beginning and the end. I want to know the why and it spins me out of control when I can't figure it out. Maybe God doesn't want me to figure it out...Hmmm! So, like the Children of Isreal, I complain and I continue to wander looking for that feeling of home.

Sometimes the things and places God has for us don't always look and feel right and just like the Children of Israel He has a purpose, there is an end, a prize. Sometimes we just have to become so unconfortable that we (I am speaking to me here) give up and lay it all down and say, "Okay God whatever you want, I lay me down, do your will, not mine, but yours be done. I lay down my plans, my dreams, my desires, my goals, my life, my family, my, my , my , my...I just want to be a vessal that you can work through. Take me Lord...I give it all up...for you.