Being here

Being here is hard to describe.

I can only compare it to being in love.  Really in love.  The deep, home Love.

After Matt had been on his mission for about a year, I still loved him.  I loved him even more than I had before.  I never saw him, and I was rarely able to communicate in any way with him, but that deep connection was there.  After the experiences I had that made me sure that he was the one I would grow old with, nothing, nothing, could have kept me from that love.  I would have waited forever to be with him again.  We cannot stand to be apart, even now.  He is my dearest companion, and I cannot express the gratitude I have for living at his side all day.

Tonight, after the kids were in bed, Matt and I stayed up to do dishes and make cookies.  Randomly, at the exact same moment, we both said out loud, “I love us.”  We are home in each other.

I noticed that feeling return to me the other day.  I had left the mountains to go buy groceries (an adventure every time).  I noticed that when I was in the store, my breath was tighter and I was less at ease (I’m sure that none of that had to do with shopping with young children by myself).  But, on the drive home, as I passed into the forest again, tears came to my eyes and my breath relaxed.  The kind trees whispered hello, and I was home.  I was home in the quiet and the chill air.  I don’t like leaving.  I long to be home in the gentle woods.

I cannot describe it, but somehow, I belong here.  I feel the shelter and love of the trees, and I feel like we each know what the other feels.

I feel like time is suspended.  I see it in every little stage.  There are times when I just stop and watch.  Sometimes, I feel like I can see eternity in just a few moments.

I am not so busy any more.  We are constantly doing something, but it’s not the same.  I once felt sadness at our girls missing out on museum trips and dance class and a hundred other things.  Now, those things seem so far away.  Our days are more reverent.

The tiniest details of the woods bring tears to my eyes.  It’s such holy ground.  I wouldn’t willingly harm the tiniest thing.

It’s interesting.  Old heartaches seem new in some ways here.  Things I have pushed and shoved down can somehow no longer stay down when I stand out in the trees.  But this time, they are healing.  Really healing.  My heart feels like it is having the first real rest it has ever had.

We all have our secret heartaches, and some of them hurt so deeply because no one, truly no one, can understand them as we ourselves do.  But, as Sheri Dew once said, “Only He knows how painful this process has been. But He also knows how grateful I am for the process, because it has sealed my heart to Him.”

Here, in the trees and water, I hear His voice, and I feel like I have been granted a little rest.  Not a life of total ease by any means…there are still many, many challenges and new little struggles.  But I am near to God and I feel His Love, and here, that is enough.