Homecoming

This summer was just as uprooting as most of of the last ten summers have been. This year, Ohio became home base so that I could be near my mother as she recuperated from her exciting appendectomy. I was away from home for most of June and didn’t return until last Monday. Leaving my family in Ohio after our last great week of camping and hanging out together was hard, even though we all needed to get back into our own routines.

The home I returned to was not the one I left. We have packed up most of our furniture and accumulated stuff in order to prepare for the major renovation that our aging ranch home needs. So I came home to empty rooms, including my office. No place to sit and read, no way to figure out where certain piles of papers ended up. I piled luggage and traveling detritus in the bedroom, so it was not serene.

But returning to church today made me feel at home. The familiar faces, warm hugs, great lessons and messages made up for the unsettled home front. Seeing the ward family today helps a lot: there are new babies, new families to learn to know, speculation about who we can get to play the piano for the ward choir, and who will sing. There are also gaps left by those who have left us for new chapters in their lives, and no matter who takes their pew or their calling, no one will replace their unique presence.

I have learned that some people will stay in our lives. The networks that connected us to loved friends in our old wards revive when we are together, when someone has a joy or a sorrow, when we need the conversation that we can have only with a certain person. I sometimes forget that all the people in my past don’t know each other. It is not hard for me to imagine a time and place where all of these come together. That will be a real homecoming!