Home?

This is my room, my bed, my charity shop calendar which I've hardly used. My makeshift chetenge curtain, my dirty beige carpet. These are my sheets, my walls and photos, my creaky always-open windows. My friends, my experiences, my memories. This is my rooftop view, the pondering tower from which I've thrown out cares, prayers, and worries over the unsuspecting flats and houses below. That's my park up the road and my bus-stop down the street and my pub across the way. These are my noisy neighbors, my finally-fixed lift, my few-too-many stairs, my home. This is my life for the past seven months, for two-hundred-and-ten days, countless laughs, tears, sighs, and boring afternoons of tea and biscuits and books just because I felt like it. These are my travels, my adventures, my mistakes. My lessons, my tests, my trials. 

They are all here. 

And as much as I love them, as much as I want to keep them preserved and vivid and fresh I know they are not mine to keep because they were never wholly mine at all. These things were all gifts - presents more plenteous and colourful than I could have asked for or expected. I could not have imagined these things, these people, these places I have seen. My God guided them to me and me to them. He brought me here and through these last seven months and He will bring me home.

May He give us all the courage that we need to go the way He shepherds us. 

That when He calls, we may go unfrightened. 

If He bids us come to Him across the waters, that unfrightened we may go. 

And if He bids us climb the hill, may we not notice that it is a hill, 

mindful only of the happiness of His company. 

He made us for Himself, that we should travel with Him 

And see Him at last in His unveiled beauty 

In the abiding city where He is light and happiness and endless home.

(Father Bede Jarrett)