As we settle into the midst of the holiday season I felt a slight tug at my heart. As I listened to Christmas carols from the past drumming up sweet memories, I came to realize the association with the tugging I felt. It’s a feeling of homesickness. Homesick for Texas? How could this be? After moving back to the Midwest where my husband and I had been raised?!?

After living in a town for four years, a place that had seemed so foreign to me at first became a place I called home. But I also realize it wasn’t the address that made it home, it was a sense of belonging, of being loved and cared for. Building friendships and relationships within the community that made you know you mattered to so many different someones.

As I open holiday cards from friends afar, I miss having their presence in my home. I am homesick for the familiarity of sweet school teachers, a loving babysitter, well-known streets and sidewalks along with the familiar destinations they took me to and the daily life we came to know. Slowly the foundation of these same factors has begun to make their presence at and around our new home address in Illinois. So I open my heart to embrace the new and the opportunity to start another chapter filled with its own friendships, traditions, relationships and familiarities.

If you find yourself struggling this holiday season with a tug of “homesickness” at your heart, whether for a place afar, a loved one who has passed or a chapter of life that has ended, I wish you peace and the hope that All is as it should be.  If you should be lucky enough to be at peace with your “address” be sure to open you heart to those that may have not found their home just yet. 

“Every instance since the beginning of time has been a coincidence: A leaf in a tree embodies the combined efforts of the earth, water, wind, stars, and sunshine. When you realize that everything has lead to the present, to this moment, you see there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be burdened by. The present moment is the moment of arrival-and it took the entire universe to create it. All is as it should be.” – Deepak Chopra, MD.