Hi Friends,
Three years ago, God would ironically use a new home to help me surrender my story to Him. As I sit here writing it’s May and the jacaranda trees are in full bloom. My mind is on home again but there’s contentment. The purple wind-swept blossoms are making a thick path for my tricycle to ride over and I smile. For as long as I can remember I have restlessly searched for home and the void of a family left behind. It was 1963 when we arrived in America. Just us three.
God is writing our story
Every day I turn the kettle on around half past three for tea. I’m reminded of parcels, tied with string that smelled like home, full of Granddad’s digestive biscuits, that I dunked in tea, and letters filled with love. I often marvel that my brave parents were young children, surviving World War 2, just outside of London, and thank God every day for them. I am grateful knowing that He wrote the story of their parents, and generations before that, and continues to write our story today.
God is writing my story
He writes for His purpose in the midst of seasons. Rain pouring down, wind in our way, sunshine on our face, and sand under our feet. He writes through my dad’s photographs and I continue that passion today. He writes my story in the garden among my mom’s hydrangeas and the sounds of songbirds. Home is filled with polaroids and pictures sitting on shelves in an old bookcase that I admired when I was 6. It belonged to my first aunt and uncle in America. The British neighbors.
God is writing your story
Home is not in monetary things, but like heaven, home is peace. For many years it was only longing and wondering, like an aching hole, rather than a gift or a story written just for me. As we age may we always remember home in a way that pours out the simple gifts of reverence over emptiness, meaning over a loss, and an understanding in our Creator’s story, written just for us. Are you restless and trying to write your own story? or are you letting go and letting Him write it for you?
“For I know the plans I have for you, declared the Lord. Plans not to harm you but to prosper you. Plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
Deborah T. Hewitt Salt+Clay Contributor
