where my heart sings

Well, the votes are in, and the consensus is unanimous:

I abso-freaking-lutely love being home (to borrow the colloquialism). Make of that what you will.

Just kidding. I'll explain.

Over the past couple years, since graduating from high school, one of the (numerous) great questions I've wrestled with has been, what shall I do with my single years? Pretty sure I'm not the only one, but the only life I've ever experienced from the inside is mine, so here's how it's gone for me.

I decided not to go to college (that's a topic for another post). I'm not married or 'in a relationship' (so is that). If (hopefully when) God does bless me with a husband, a family, and a home of my own, that's where I want to be - I don't want a career (that might actually make a more interesting post than the idea preceding). So in the intervening space of time ... what to do? And how to go about doing it?

For the first school year after I graduated, I worked full time at a local Christian grade school. This experience had its blessings and its tribulations. I learned, grew, and changed through it, and I'm glad I walked that path for awhile; but ultimately I found that the life of the full-time employee is most emphatically not the life for me. I knew it before, but in a way it was good to know it from experience.

After deciding against a repeated attempt at the afore-mentioned venture, I found that the quite un-directed life was also rather difficult to manage. I wanted very much to be useful, but more from an over- than an under-abundance of ideas of how to achieve this goal, it was hard to know exactly where to go next.

Well, God blessed me with plenty of opportunities, and I took some of them. I've ended up with quite a variety of little odd jobs, almost all of which I really rather enjoy. I like being flexible, tied to many rearrangeable schedules rather than a single concrete one. I like being available when people ask for help with things, or want to go do something fun together.

The problem is that, as I've gradually taken on more and more of these little commitments, my calendar has, naturally, gotten fuller and fuller - less and less flexible - less and less time at home.

And I don't like it. Home is where I belong. When I'm always away, nothing's quite as it should be. I'm out of touch with my family, too far away, too much scattered, too autonomous. My whole foundation has a stone under one edge, and all my dancing turns into stumbling, and I forget which way is exactly up.

It's a gradual thing, and I don't always notice how lonely I am for home, until I get a free day or two to spend there. I had that this weekend, and it was like sunshine from out of a heavy fog.

I think that's at least partly why the completion of yesterday's horrid paperwork thrilled me so thoroughly - because, all that misery behind me, I still had a whole, entire, uninterrupted Saturday to spend at home.

I spent it almost entirely in the kitchen. It was amazing.

No, I'm not delusional enough to think that every day spent at home will of necessity be comparably happy. Life has its hills and valleys, no matter where you spend it. But I'll be revising my schedule in the near future (by which I mean, not clearing completely, but scaling back significantly in most corners). I think I've found my footing back again.

And my heart is remembering a little song it used to sing all the time. It's a good song.


(p.s. I know "abso-freaking-lutely" isn't actually a colloquialism. That's the point.)