Home.

I’ve been searching for home for most of my twenties.

Home, where my parents live, sort of feels like home.

But not entirely.

Childhood memories and items in my closet remain, including lots of prom dresses and bridesmaids dresses— but it doesn’t feel like my home anymore.

Other friends and family members have beautiful homes— places that truly feel like I can kick back and relax. Places that are so familiar and filled with people I love.

In these places, I feel so at home, but it’s only for a short while and then the feelings fade, and I’m back to waiting for my own home— and wishing I had a place that truly felt like it. And maybe a person to do life with by my side in that house too.

I love where I live now, but all the places I’ve lived in recent years have felt so temporary.

While I hang curtains, buy plants and throw blankets on the couch to make it cozy, it still doesn’t feel like home all the time.

It’s as if I always know I won’t be there for long.

But today, on this mountain– today feels different.

Taking a mental health day to go skiing, having some extra time to kill before the lifts open up to write this— I am realizing something.

Home has been here all along.

The feeling of home I have been searching for isn’t when I finally have my own home or a significant other.

Home is me.

Home is now.

Because home is within my own heart and soul.

Sounds corny, I know. But stay with me here.

The contentment I feel with my life exactly the way it is, in all its joys, all its hardships and all its imperfections.

This is home.

And I am home.

I have been all along with Christ in me — the hope of glory.

God’s love and joy is at a level at which we cannot even begin to comprehend.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and when you’re on the top of a mountain, it really drives the point home.

We have no capacity to even begin to grasp God’s love, grace and joy for us.

The joy he wants us to take so freely! His unending freedom. His peace that passes all understanding.

And the fact that he made this mountain, the trees, the snow, this entire country, you and me, our entire population for that matter, this planet, and all the galaxies— and here I am thinking a house or a boy will make me more content?

Now that’s just crazy.

His love for me is vaster than the mountains, the sun and the stars.

And I’m learning to take life a little slower in this season and truly let that sink in.

I’m learning to value alone time, time with friends and truly rest in God’s love for me.

No more striving and trying so hard.

God doesn’t care if I eat well all the time or have a six pack or go on awesome trips or make a ton of money.

God just loves me.

And when we finally start to see it and feel it — that we are safe, we are home within ourselves — it’ll change everything.

We don’t have to search for it somewhere else— we already have it.

It is a treasure within that no one can take from us.

Experiencing views like this right here — you can’t help but be stopped right in your tracks.

You can’t worry about everything you don’t have or the things on your bucket list you haven’t checked off yet when you see the mountains across the sky and feel like a spec on the earth.

Maybe someday I’ll feel at home and have a home of my own.

But for now I’m just going to focus on the feeling of home I have with my life exactly the way it is.

God loves me. He loves you. And we don’t need anything else to feel at home except Him. Because truly all that matters is His love.

And He’s been there all along.

And His for us will change everything.

xx

E

(I mean can’t you just smell the fresh mountain air from this picture??)