I was in my preteens maybe, post middle school crushes but pre high school angst. My best friend-psuedo-big-sister-babysitter-slash-confidante was back from a whirl around England and we settled her homesickness with a film. A Room With a View. Period piece and James Ivory loveliness, bucolic and naive and romantic. And sexy, without the sex. Those university-aged lads playing in a pond sans trou? Mmm-hmm. It was enough for me, at the time, to realize this was where it was at. Europe. Boys. Story. Life.

This week I went to France, and my room with a view was an ancient roof looking upon an ancient wall with a square little paint chipped window. It wasn't much of a view actually, and the gray clouds and rainy days kept it that way, no matter what window you looked through. But still, as I walked the halls and peered through each one, I let my gaze linger. I am in France, I thought, and I can only see it through these windows.

We did go to Paris for an evening. And I fell before we even left. Skinned my hands and knees so bad I was sure I'd need surgery and would beat my mother to the knee replacement prize. My coworkers/new friends picked me up and dusted me off and played sweet mothers and brothers to me. We had two hours in Paris, where it rained, where Notre Dame was closed, where we paid an obscene amount for tea. My knees hurt and my pride hung low and we maybe spent more time on trains than on any Parisian cobblestone streets. But the view, the lamps in the rain, the people staring at the face of Jesus without even realizing... it was something to behold, actually.

I fell again, on the last day. Good news: all my coworkers who missed the first fall were there to witness the second. I said, "I want to swear," and someone behind me said, "I would." Someone else suggested I wear shoes next time and a third person advised him I was likely to hit him for that. I sat on that last stair and said it, loud and good and so humiliated. Shit. I was in France, and the view looked not so great from where I had just landed.

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Back with Lisa-Jo and her challenge to write, just write, for five minutes. Join us here. Hope your view is just as lovely, minus the bruising.

Shameful thoughts on home

Home...

When i first saw this topic, my chest filled with angst. If you know me or have been reading this blog for any short length of time, you know nothing quite disturbs me more than thinking about, wondering about, longing for a home. I don't really want to write about it anymore. I don't really want to think about it anymore. And I've spent more than a few hours praying that God would fill me with content with or without a home and let the idea, the dream, the impossibility of a perfect long-term security leave my heart so that the empty space it reveals can be filled with other things of greater value.

Today, I wait for an email to confirm whether or not my home is in Ireland or if we should just go ahead and plant ourselves here. I'm pretty sure I know where they will point us (back overseas, where we wish to go), but the waiting is driving me crazy and they sure are taking their time and I really really want to be selfish and petty about waiting to go home...

But...

The longing for home does not belong solely to me. I can't get on my high horse and demand a "home" when there are millions of children literally without a roof over their heads, there are babies with no hopes of homes - ever. There are mothers who have no place to take their children for protection or solace or security. There is a world filled with people with this same longing, but without any of the modern conveniences that I so harshly reject because, to me, it isn't enough to call home.

I'm wracked with shame when I truly think about it, when I look around me and in my heart I say with so little care, "Nope, not good enough, sorry." This is my sin, my shame, to have more than enough and to reject it anyway.

Oh, God, replace this sin with You. Take away this pride. Remove these shameful thoughts. Don't waste these precious resources on a heart so dark. Take those babies, those children, those mothers, and give them all I forfeit. I am unworthy. And they are Yours.



confession: sometimes I edit, and sometimes I write for six minutes, but still I write furiously with gypsy mama. where does your heart say is home?