Journey's End

I had the realization today that I feel like I'm coming home. My life the past ten or fifteen years has been filled with a roller coaster ride of a journey. It certainly has been characterized in many ways as the journey of a prodigal son, though I realize that it's a journey I needed to take.

As I sat in bed a couple of nights ago, thinking about life and the lives of some of my friends who are going through some difficult times, or facing choices I fear will result in potentially disastrous consequences, I was overwhelmed with sorrow, and I felt an outpouring of love for them. I knew in that midnight moment that I was in a moment of clarity, a fleeting moment of having a desire for the higher good, and that I was seeing the world in the way I need to see it. I knew full well that it would be gone just as quickly as it came. In that moment, and in that clarity, I found myself asking God to push me towards this awakening desire to love, to continuously prod me to love others more and more. Loving others is not the driving force in my life, as noble as I would like to be, but in that transitory moment, it seemed to me that this desire was pure, true and unadulterated, the truest expression of what the deepest part of me--the noblest part of me--wanted me to be.

I sometimes think of C.S. Lewis' famous quote about desire: "it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

The overwhelming love and concern that I felt for this friend of mine I realized was a moment of a strong, noble and good desire. For so long, I have been content with weak desires, and often viewed them as the highest aim. I am far too easily pleased. If I look at the past fifteen years, there were times of complete and utter blindness--I was lost in a murky world where I couldn't see the light, though I believed at the time that I was in a place of blinding light and freedom. I turned my back on God completely for a time, cursed him, and wanted nothing to do with him. But slowly, ever slowly, he compelled me back to himself.

It has been a rough and weary road. But I am close to journey's end. Tonight, it dawned on me how far this journey has taken me. The landscape is familiar to me, and I know now that home is just over the next hill. It will look different now--or perhaps it is my way of seeing that is different. I suppose that home will be more genuine, the real article, rather than a poster board cutout of what I thought home was supposed to be. I see it now. This, I believe, was the reason for my journey away.

I am grateful to God for not letting go of me. I am grateful to my friends and family for their love and prayers.

It's good to be coming home.