musings from a chilly sabbath

I just woke up from my Sunday afternoon nap and am enjoying a cup of coffee. On these days I always think about home and how important Sunday afternoons were growing up. I thought about my family when I sat down in the caf, and although I ate with good friends and we laughed, it wasn't the same. I thought about Brent's dad, Beck, when I poured my cup of coffee before I let the whole pot brew [he doesn't approve of that]. I've always gotten a little homesick on Sundays since I arrived at school four years ago. I don't know quite what it is but I just appreciate a good rest, and it seems like that is hard to come by when I'm on campus-- there are always papers and tests staring me in the face, books that need to be read, meetings that need to be attended etc. The other day I wrote about this missing home and how home is a part of me forever. It seems applicable to share this today:

Her head is empty right now because her heart is full. She had heard once, in her human anatomy class, how blood will rush to the vital organs to keep them warm when the body is exposed to cold. This phenomenon leaves the fingers and toes cold, but the heart keeps pumping. It is like this for her now, in the northern part of Iowa at a school far from her home. She is finding it harder to concentrate in her classes because her heart is focused on not forgetting.

In her Senior year, she has been away from home almost four years now. Her freshman year, multiple people tole her time and again taht this place, this college, would become home to her. That time and circumstances here would change her. It was at this point she made a promise to herself that she would never call this place home and she would always smile when she crossed the Missouri-Iowa state line going south.

And that is why now, in her senior year, it is getting harder to concentrate-- not becauseshe no longer cares to learn or that she has grown tired of her college friends--it is simply exhausting to constantly crave to be somewhere else. She is body and soul tired from missing Missouri.

Sure, part of what she misses are the people-her mom and dad, grandparents, friends, even her fiance. But she also misses the rivers and creeks, the huge oak trees and the flowering dogwoods. She misses the bluebirds perched in these trees and the whitetail deer and turkies that inhabit the fields. She misses the almost-there-southern-drawl, the smell of laundry dried by the sun. She misses the roads that curve with the land and make square-miles simply a figure of speech. She misses the excitement and tension in the air during hunting season and the sound of rain on the tin-roof porch that was added to her family's new house just for the purpose of hearing the rattattat of that melody. She misses the springtime and the fall, which are distinct and ushered in with reverence and beauty.

She misses being able to speak of home with a smile on her face, rather then a lump in her throat.

And for these reasons she can no longer concentrate when away at school-- because all her blood rushes to her heart to keep it pumping with these memories--to keep it beating with thoughts of hom.

She was cultivated with the land around her and one day she will return so that she can hear again-- so that she can start to listen with her heart once more.

My coffee is getting cold and there is homework waiting. By the way, it's 50 degrees and windy right now and supposed to get down into the 30s tonight! Brrr.... We haven't had a very pretty fall so far. A few trees changed/are changing...but I think most just gave up and dropped their leaves.

Happy Sabbath.