I'm not blind. I see you waiting there. Stacking up in the site-traffic, checking your RSS, your sage. I've gotten your emails and your comments. And I've been ignoring you just fine. Hardly thinking about you at all, I mean, in terms of this site. But I see you just the same.

I'm trying. Honestly I am. Trying to write something that isn't my heart in black and white. Trying to say anything that would organize the thoughts. Trying to just type something, at least. So here. Taste this:

I've been home for one week now. And for the first time in two years I miss Tennessee. I know, aren't you shocked? You who are most familiar with the sporatic nature of me and my emotions. You're shocked, right? Heh. I think I prayed so heartily for a change in my heart concerning that place that I am reeling in amazement at the change.

I miss Tennessee. I miss my church there. I miss my friends there. I miss the family we created because we didn't have our own. I miss family dinners and laughing so hard I would cry. I miss waking up in the morning, girls straggling out of bed to the smell of coffee and the sound of stirring. I miss the birthday party this weekend, taking place at a favorite family's home. I miss secretly videotaping our neighbors and feeding our stray cat Puma/Kitty/Orange. I miss our squeaky dryer and I miss our college and career group. Mostly I just miss feeling a part of something.

It could be that my most hospitable family, the people with whom I live here in New York, are on vacation this week. And so I've grown tired of eating eggs and not being able to drive my car which didn't pass inspection, but mostly tired of being home alone. It could be that I'm not fully plugged back into this place. Almost every face is new, and the old ones have all grown up. It could be that I haven't found a job yet, or that I know I'm leaving in a few days to spend a few weeks in another state. It could be any number of things.

But mostly I think it's just change. The thing that pricks me in the places I least like to be touched. The thing that startles me from stuper and says there must be more to life than sqeaky dryers, stray cats, and laughing hysterically with the people who make me laugh more than anyone.

So don't let me wallow, and I'm not asking for tea and sympathy. I'm really just writing because I haven't written anything in so long. I'm really just confessing that as sweet as homecoming sounds from far away, when that homecoming becomes solid and real, we remember all the good things we had in that other place we called home.

And we remember why Heaven is such a sweet exchange--there's no changing nor shifting in shadow there. It's forever, and I like the sound of that.