Going Home

Tonight Sara and Rachel and I are in Searsport, Maine at my parents' house -- the house that I grew up in from fourth grade on. It's a log home that sits back from the road in a wooded lot on a quiet, dead end street, surrounded by acres and acres of forest. During the summer after I finished third grade, my Dad (who recently retired after teaching high school Biology for 40 years!) built this house with his own hands -- with the help of lots of friends and family members who came to swing a hammer or a paintbrush nearly every Saturday that summer. The building materials were delivered on the last day of school in June, and we moved in over Labor Day weekend, just before school started again. That was almost 30 years ago!

Tomorrow my cousin Sarah will be married, and I have the joy of officiating as she and Chris pledge vows of love and faithfulness to one another.

Tonight I'm feeling the blessings of love, and of family, and of going home again... and of my Mom's chocolate chip cookies, which were waiting when we arrived tonight. So as the clock strikes midnight, I'll go upstairs in this log home that really is home in the truest sense, and I'll crawl into a bed covered with quilts in the room that used to be my sister's, and I'll listen to the rain on the roof, and I'll whisper a prayer of thanks for all that was, and all that is, and all that is yet to be.