There’s something about returning to your roots (well, where your heart is most at home, anyway) that bring peace and balance back into your life.  No matter the heat, humidity, and light smog (which Atlanta is notorious for), you all at once feel the world is a better place to live in.

My favorite place in my hometown…GO BRAVES!!

As I begin to ponder my new role in life as a soon-to-be “mommy,” I wonder where it is my own child will one day find this kind of happiness in his life.  Will it be the place of his birth (Lansing, Michigan)?  Will it be some other place where we end up moving, as his soon-to-be “daddy” pursues his dream to be a gastroenterologist?  Or will he never really find a specific location that he will call “home”?

…so which way is home?

In the beginning of our time in the Midwest, I wrote about the fact that what I considered “home” was never really tied to a certain city or state.  It was about who I was with, as it was the people (or certain person) around me that made me feel at home.  Still, spending more and more time away from my home base of Atlanta makes me realize just how much my heart has formed ties to the familiarity of this place.  As much as I am adaptable to whatever locale I live (and can find something about the place to love), I cannot help but feel a bit of heartache and longing for home base.

…a place where his heart can be free to find contentment and joy.

…and you KNOW we find lots of joy here…

But while I wish to create such an environment for him here on earth, I also want to teach him that our TRUE home is beyond any place we can reach by any mode of transportation.  I want him to know that discontent, pain, heartache, and longing will always be a part of his life because we are not really “home” yet, no matter how much peace we may think a certain place brings us.  I want him to know that it is only natural to feel the pangs of homesickness everywhere he goes because we are meant to find a home beyond this world.

He may find himself traveling all across this great nation of ours…perhaps even outside of said nation.  He may end up settling down in one place all his life, content to allow his roots to run deep.  He may decide his home really is defined by the people he loves or by a specific city/state/environment.  But there will never truly be real satisfaction and true peace in his heart until he is in the arms of the One whom his body, mind, and soul should wholly belong to.  It’s something that I, as his mommy, will never be able to give him on my own.  I will only be able to direct him to Him…point him towards his way “HOME.”