Eight.
The number of times my feet stepped off one continent and onto another.
From paved roads, comfortable homes to red dirt streets and mud huts.
The journey is grueling.
Each time I am more and more unsettled.
How is that possible?
Is that peace?
Yes.
A holy discontent.
A longing for all things made new.
Home is no longer about a place, it is about people, my people.
Some of my people reside within the four walls of my physical home, others are 3000 miles away.
How do you reconcile the pain of leaving your kids?
Goodbye tears flow equally from your kids on both sides of the ocean.
Heart ripped out.
And broken again.
You never get used to it.
How can you?
In some ways it gets worse.
It gets harder.
How do you see children with bloated bellies and red hair from malnutrition one day and the next return to the land of abundance?
How do you follow children deep into the woods to the nastiest water source and return to an abundance of clean water?
How do you find a normal again?
You don’t.
And that’s ok.
We aren’t supposed to be settled.
We aren’t supposed to feel comfortable.
The more you love the more it hurts, but that’s good.
A love that has been tested and tested and perseveres despite all odds, that is the deepest, sweetest love.
But it comes at a cost.
The price is worth paying.
Eight.
So many times now that I am no longer sure where home is.
But I am learning its not either place.
Home is coming.
It is the place where He will right all wrongs, He will make all things new.
Till then I will fight.
Fight for the broken, the lost and forgotten.
Find those in the pit, covered and stained by everything that is broken.
Raise them up out of the ashes, and given them a crown of beauty.
Speak over them the promises and words of their Father.
I will fight.
I will find my place in the place in between.