Moments that live so very deep within... with the most deep sense of gratitude I share.... You have loved me and I have been loved

The plane was landing in Roanoke. I sat back into the seat and looked down. A sense of homecoming filled me and as the plane touched down and began to make its way over to the terminal I thought to myself that this is what it must feel like to come home. The familiar sights of the concourse… the sense of anticipation of seeing those I loved and knew loved me…. an unfamiliar feeling settled into me and the joy of coming home was upon me.
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I sat in the chair and watched… I watched as they talked to one another, lively discussed topics with one another, barbequed food together, laughed, yelled, joked with one another …. I sat in their driveway on a lawn chair and just watched them be a family…. And in those watchings a hope and a hunger was born…… an understanding that it isn’t in the doing together as much as the being together …. Being together in all our little things that make us us….. and as I watched them I realized an aspect of being human that had never dawned on me before….. and I saw people just simply living and delighting in each other and just being together…. I realized that we are truly stronger when we are not alone… when we are loved.. and surrounded by those that love us we are stronger… we are better… we are more alive…..
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I pulled up to the building and I sat there…. I got out and went over to it and just ran my hand along the siding… touching the door… closing my eyes I could see other times I had been there.. I could hear the voices of the moments that had past and I smiled….. So often I had run to this place… so often I had hungered for this place… so often I had dreamed and thought of and remembered and now I was here again…. Inside were faces… familiar and full of love… inside were treasured memories of rooms and sights that I had taken in… I could tell you all about all the times I had stood in the all the different places I had stood and how I had been taken in and changed by the love that filled that building……
I could hear the voices of the ones that loved me… see their faces…. And I entered the building and began to see them again and hear them again… the history of having been loved by them mixed with the delight of currently sharing space with them and I knew their love…. And I felt very much at home… in a place where I could dwell and in a place where I could breath
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For me these moments live earnestly so very deep within…. These moments I do not take lightly or tread carelessly upon…. I was an adult that felt like a child inside and these moments taught me about life in the very way a child should learn about life but yet I wasn’t a child…… being welcomed and wanted and included and loved…… these moments and the people within them served as a ladder for me to climb upon.. to climb away from all I had known into a wondrous new life….. I have brothers and sisters.. mothers and fathers…. Dearest of friends and companions…. Treasures… I have been added to and not taken from…. I have been walked next to and carried…. I was taught to truly breath and was given the space to learn how to do so…….. I was known and in being known I was loved, received, accepted….. I was known and in being known I learned to live in grace and mercy…… And they have followed me all the days of my life and I can dwell in the house of the Lord.. my Father forever and ever……