Just Like That

And just like that…

I am home. Sleeping in my own bed. Familiar night birds singing. The rumble of lorry trucks crossing speed bumps on the distant road echoing as jet lag sinks me deep.

Four am wake up times. Long talks in the dark of morning. Coffee. In my own cup. In my own kitchen.

The comfortable pattern of all the morning puttering in my own space and home.

Just like that.

11,000 road miles later. Five university visits later. One commercial pilot’s license later. Six flights with connections-so-close-we-have-to-run-to-make-it later. Seven weeks with family later. Countless hotel stays later. One hundred and forty days of living out of suitcases later. Just like that.

This life we live. Miles and travel and culture diving and hope.

Bags and all the constant weighing. Are we enough? Is this enough? Is there still a place for us here?

Sometimes there are answers and sometimes the questions loom long ahead.

But always there is a response.

Stirring from the heavy weight of jet lagged napping in the car yesterday I awoke to the green tea fields of our home district rippling ahead of me with the shadowy strength of the Ruwenzori Mountains anchoring behind. Serenity settled deep as my children began to exclaim in excitement around me.

Home.

Yes it is.

Faces we recognize. Roads we watched dug and graded and (oh so slowly) paved. Our post office. Our grocery store. Language that sings familiar in our ears.

This place where I am Atwooki. This place where I have a job to do.

Just like that.

Two decades of goodbyes and transitions and losses and gains. Two times ten years of arrivals and departures. All the coming and going wearing down our thresholds, opening wide some doors. Welcoming hugs and hand shakes. Goodbye words ‘eeked’ out of choked down sobs.

New. Again. The same. Enduring.

Just like that.

Staying loved.

Remembering that we are His. Called and equipped. Enabled.

That His purposes prevail. That His words never return void.

That He is my shepherd and I lack nothing.

The delight of that. The confidence in that provision.

The immense miracle of belonging in a place only He could make for me.

Home.

Just like that.

Swift and yet agonizingly slow.

Brief and yet forever etched in my soul.

A mere mist and yet saturating my deepest heart.

Just like that.