I flew home last week for a week that felt fast and short and halfway done.  I cried when my pastor told me to come back more often and my dad squeezed me.  I cried on a Nebraska highway on my bike, flying through hills and green, green pastures, flying through a prayer to Him while my brother waited twenty miles down the road and my sister drove my uncle to the nearest emergency room because his heart just wasn't right.  I cried on the phone late in the afternoon with husband while I was in the yard and while he asked me if my heart was better.  I cried at the Denver airport when I got the message about goodbyes being too hard and to stay longer next time.

I thought about what it was like hundreds of years ago when people weren't able to leave each other.  When there weren't motors and engines and when whole families shared one piece of land.  I thought about the way social media and phone messages easily eat my day but I found it hard to not look back through every picture taken because this is what I have, now.

I listened to sister break over the distance.  I watched my parents fight to stay awake with me into early morning.  I heard my brother say goodbye three different times.  I hated the clock.  I missed my other home.  I wished and wished for a way to take the good from both places and squeeze it into one.  I counted on heaven.

I talked my family into vacationing here with us this summer and then I ordered more beds.  And that helps.  I promised myself I would be better at answering the phone when my dad calls.  Sometimes that makes me more homesick, though.  I tried to explain buying a house in a town far, far away but I lost the explanation somewhere between Sandpoint and Omaha.

I came home to a man I missed like mad.  To a house that is just waiting to be made into something new.  To good friends and a good town and the promise of great visits.  I came home a little sad, but still thankful.  I came home reworking that word.  Always I am reworking it.  Looking for it.  Trying to pin it down into one tidy thing: this is what home is.  But that too.  Here and there.  Him and her and them.  I came home understanding that home will always be miles away, no matter where I am.  Home will always be a definition away, a memory away.  Home will continue to be a chase.  And then?  There will be heaven.