Belonging?

These are just some pictures I took as I was roaming around the countryside yesterday afternoon. I'm not sure if you can tell it, but the sunset was over a large field of rice paddies which are beautifully green. I was half exploring, half heading down to a new beach area that I have found (it has been around forever, just my new discovery) to check out a resort that I had heard about.

I was wandering around because I was feeling antsy and alone, and I know it probably sounds weird, but my car has always been a place of refuge for me. It's funny, I just remembered that as I was writing this. I always head for nature and animals if I can find them. In Thomasville, I head down those beautiful red clay roads through the woods and here I head for the agricultural area and the beach - and it just so happens the agricultural area is on the way to the beach. My car is a place for me to talk out loud to the Lord, to listen to music and just look for all the many beautiful things the Lord has created and given to us to appreciate. Yesterday it was this beautiful "flower" in a tree, an old man working in a field with his carabou, and a gorgeous sunset over the mountains in the distance.

As I was listening to a Sarah Groves CD ("Conversations") The song titled "Going Home" seemed to really capture the way I am feeling these days.

I've been feeling kind of restless, I've been feeling out of place I can hear a distant singing, a song that I can't write, but it echoes in what I'm always trying to say.

There is a feeling I can't capture, it's always just a prayer away, I want to know the ending, things hoped for but not seen, But I guess thats the point of hoping anyway.

I'm confined by my senses to really know what You are like, You are more than I can fathom and more than I an guess, and more than I can see with human sight. But I have felt You with my spirit, I have felt You fill this room and is just an invitation, just a sample of the whole and I cannot wait to be going home.

Going Home, I'll meet you at the table. Going Home, I'll meet you in the air. And you are never too young to think about it. Oh, I cannot wait, I cannot wait to be going home! Face to face, how can it be? Face to face how can it be? Face to face how can it be????

Sometimes we think it is when we are "out of sorts" that we long for Home, but maybe we are just in the midst of being in this fallen world, tired of living in our frail, depraved bodies, constantly bouncing against other frail, depraved bodies, tired of being in the battle, tired of being where we don't belong - on this fallen earth. Maybe we are meant to long for that other place - where the battle is over, the world is no longer fallen, but totally as beautiful as God created it and "Face to face!!" I don't think I will ever hear those words, "well done," but I know that I will hear, "Well, Cheryl, you sure screwed it up, but precious daughter, I do love you!