Homesick

My life has been lived up and down the West Coast. If you blindfold me and leave me anywhere in western Washington, Oregon, or California, I’ll probably know where I am and how to get to where I want to be in less than 60 seconds.

The Willamette valley in Oregon is where many of my closest friends live. Though it’s a little wet for me, I love the people, the pace of life, the culture, and the flat-out beauty of rolling hills providing the foundation for 500 shades of green.

I’m excited to be driving there tomorrow. An autumn road trip that starts at 4am and goes on for a thousand miles and two states before arriving at my destination is my idea of a great day. I can’t wait to enjoy the transition from our Southern California fall (i.e. early summer weather) to the great golden expanse of the Central Valley, to the hills and mountains of Northern California and Southern Oregon, and finally to the multihued leaves that are mostly on the ground by now, the evergreen (and some naked) trees, smoking chimneys, warm sweaters, falling rain, and the dark afternoons of the Willamette Valley.

I’ve been all over the world and I absolutely love to experience new places, but I’m so blessed to live here on the West Coast. It’s my home.

But as much as my home is here, it’s also not. Great men and women of God throughout the ages have lived in the tension between having a place they loved deeply and looking forward to a better place; an eternal home.

Sometimes, even on the best of days, I get a little homesick. Not for Oregon, or Central California, or Seattle or any of the other places outside of LA where I’ve lived, but for Heaven. Some people want to downplay the reality of afterlife.

Even some believers say that we need to be more focused on the Kingdom reality in this life and make a difference here. I don’t disagree at all with that need…but the “here” is still not my home. Though I’ve never been there, and haven’t talked to anyone who has, there is a better place waiting that my heart longs for…sometimes to the point of pain.

Though I’m blessed to live life on the West Coast now, there may come a time where Jesus wants me somewhere else. I would go, and I would surely get homesick. But that’s ok, because I know I can handle it…

I’ve been homesick for my permanent home almost all of my life.