Wednesday, July 15, 2009

You Can Go Home Again

Thomas Wolfe is famous for saying, “You can’t go home again.” But recently, I found myself transported back to a farmhouse in Pennsylvania, with wooden floors and a grand wrap around porch. I grew up on that farm, where I played cowboys and Indians, and hid in the bales of hay. I felt my fingers pinched in the latches of chicken cages in a hot, sweaty, dusty chicken barn. I watched as my dad taught my older sister how to drive a tractor as I was filled with jealousy. The stink of the pig barn and the pungent smell of the manure all ran together like watercolors on a painting.

Then, suddenly, I skipped forward in time to a cattle ranch in Colorado where I moved to when I was alone and needing to escape. I was seventeen and had wanted to have an adventure, especially in the west. I had watched all the John Wayne movies, and was in love with the Marlboro Man. A wonderful Christian family invited me to live on a real cattle ranch and that was just what I was looking for. I remember jumping out of the car to open or close the cattle gates, for my friend Shelly as she explained to me what they were. I remembered how afraid I was when I would help feed the cattle and they would all come running, closing in around us. So much was going on inside my brain that I became speechless. This visit back in time would fill pages of paper, but all of this happened in the small space of a Sunday afternoon. I had gone to visit a friend’s ranch for the day, and I got a grand tour. What I didn’t expect was such a flood of nostalgic memories, right out of the blue.

Nostalgia, homesickness, reminiscence, all words that can describe those fleeting moments, when a smell, a picture, a feeling, a taste, a moment of déjà vu or something else takes you time traveling back to another time and place. It could be so many things that can start that trek back to a memory. Happy, sad, indifferent, or a gamut of emotions and thoughts can overtake you in seconds. The experience of tapping into a past memory can leave you speechless or shouting out in glee to another, trying to put words on the past mixed with the present. Usually, when caught up in such a moment with others, it is impossible to have them wholly join you in your journey back to this other place.

What happened to me was a God moment. All these past moments that floated through my mind took me to different places in my heart. These past months and years have been hard years. Most of this time was spent in tears, frustration, fear and mind numbing anger at God, circumstances and others. I functioned and put on a happy face when I had to. . . I got out of bed every morning and did all the routine things that anyone would do, but on the inside I was so broken, hard-hearted and old. I had lost vision and on the inside I felt I might certainly perish.

For a brief time the Lord took me back to many periods of my younger life and let me feel youth, hope, beauty, fun, adventure, peace and vision. The Lord showed me my heart, past, present and future and it was all tied together with the past. I really had known Him and loved Him, all my life. I just felt so loved by Him in an eternal way. I was loved in one big lump sum. His opinion of me and feelings toward me had never changed one bit from age 0 to 7, or 7 to 17, or 17 to the present. I felt Him say, “You are my beloved and you are my friend.” (Song of Solomon 5:16) He was my home. He was my place of homesickness. It took me several days to process this experience, but I finally realized that you can go home again.

No comments:

Post a Comment