DON'T MISS IT

Swinging in my hammock, watching the doves land on telephone poles and prune their feathers, I feel a freedom so deep it aches and a significance so elusive it haunts. What may seem like passive observation of the green leaves’ contrast against the vast blue emptiness stretched out above is really an inward observation of how it is possible to marry longing and contentedness. There is a significance beyond understanding in the way my heart quickens as I gaze into the soft sky, containing anything and everything and I can feel discovery on the tip of my tongue but never closer.

And as I seek out an introduction to so sweet a melancholy, I find at last its proper name: homesickness.

The untouchable closeness of the peaceful sea of sky stretched beyond the mountains is the window through which I can nearly perceive my heavenly home. As I grapple with friendship and finances and the very aching, pressing poetry that threatens to burst from my chest without ever reaching my mouth, the heavens lie peacefully just beyond my reach, and I long for the home I was created to live in.

The warmth. The breeze. The way the trees reach up—just like me—trying so hard to get home.

This isn’t permanent.

And my homesickness is a gift. A reminder. A nudge from a Father who will not be forgotten or neglected, who reveals Himself in the mysterious emotions that only nature—so far out of reach but curiously pressing into me—can translate.

We have the sky. We have the trees. We have the birds and the breeze all just out of reach. But we have eyes to see and ears to hear and we must look and listen so that we don’t miss it.

Hush, child, don’t miss it.