One of my favorite all-time movie scenes is the one in which real-life pilot Jim Lovell, played so movingly by Tom Hanks, describes feeling led to safety by a bioluminescent algae trail when his navigational instruments had short-circuited earlier in life: “You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home,” he said.

I have long been taught that the idea of home is one that is more sturdy, and more portable, than it sometimes appears, and I love the idea that it is expressed.

Even so, it is undeniable that there are certain places and activities that at least seem to approximate and fulfill a sense of home more than others at different times. A theme of this blog has been to address and validate a feeling of losing an expression of home, but to do so in a healing way.

Sometimes, in quietly getting a sense of what it seems my heart is saying to me, it almost feels as though I am caring for a very young child who is eternally optimistic and does not see problems as fixed or daunting at all. After seeming to lose so much all over the course of a small number of days so many years ago, I have long hoped to see much-loved parts of my life restored and to, at least in a sense, go home. Home to what feels natural. Home to what feels indigenous to my identity.

Every day, it is as if I feel the toddler in the car seat of my heart repeat, with joy, “Maybe today is the day the door will open for me to go home. Tomorrow probably I will get to go home.”

Over many years, when this has seemed impossible, I have pursued various alternate modes of serving, and at one point, pursued a career direction that felt totally wrong in the hope that it would somehow redeem my earlier experience. But at every step along the way, there was always a hope and aim of going home again.

Whatever this looks like, and whenever this happens, it is still my hope. For my heart’s sake, and for the sake of all I know in my heart I hope to contribute,

I pray.