When your heart feels at home

This post deserves a disclaimer.

For those who don't value the sentimental, this is not for you.

For those cynical of things of the heart, this is not for you.

These words don't come from a don't-you-wish-you-have-this-too place.

These words come from a place of gratitude and honesty.

For those who long, for those who wait, for those who question love, this is for you. Read and be encouraged.

And with that being said, here come my sentimental musings.

I once asked my aunt how she knew she was going to marry my uncle. My searching eyes and probing question revealed a young, questioning heart. This seemed to me to be THE question with a mysterious, perhaps unknowable, answer.

"Well," she spoke with a smile in her eyes, "You'll know because your heart feels at home."

 

All these years, those words bounched around in my analytical mind. I had no idea how her words would help me decipher love's code.

Now, as a 20 something engaged, reflective girl, my heart has found itself at home. As I nestle into this new homey place, I think I know what my aunt meant. It is only my own limited experience that I can share, but I believe that it is worth sharing.

 When your heart feels at home, you don't fall. You simply discover that you've been living out love, and risk admitting it's there by uttering it with words. It enters not with a bang but rather with a growing clarity, like the sun's gradual ascension bringing light to everything below. It's the heart's awakening at just the right time. A few mountain peaks and a few valleys, but it's the everyday plateaus, the ordinary things of life that weave together to create real love.

When your heart feels at home, you find that it's nothing like you expected. It's full and rich and deep and unknown and terrifying and genuine. It does not always adhere to reason. It's redemptive and risky. It's an everyday choosing of death to self  in a way that defies culture and natural instinct. However, you know that you're choosing a well-traveled road, a road ordained and sacred. A road leading to something eternal.

 

When your heart feels at home, you've never felt so comfortable in workout pants, a messy bun and yesterday's makeup. It's the silliness of late nights with your high school best friend and the deep desire shared with someone whose soul you've let so close to your own. The settledness inside knowing you'll always have at least one always in your corner.

When your heart feels at home, you recognize that in itself, love will never fully fill you up. That the aching need inside is only momentarily appeased by another. Even at its best, love shared falls short of the Creator's design, pressing you forward to the Source of the purest love, Love Himself. Maturity teaches that you do not need another to complete you. You simply choose that you don't want to become sancitified alongside another. You do not love out of skill or habit, but as the Giver of love teaches. As the Giver graciously, continuously pours love into imperfect hearts, it overflows and spills over to be generously shared.

 

In this temporary place,  my handbreadth of a life, my heart has found a home.