Homecoming

Among good campers there’s an unspoken agreement: we’ve traded the comforts of home for the excitement and adventure of the road. We don’t complain about the absence of the familiar comforts. We focus on the adventure. I think it’s a good trade. But it takes energy. One may not realize how much until one collapses into an armchair at home.

Our fifty-five month camping trip ended this week. Our furniture and belongings, which I shipped from Seattle while I was there in September, arrived in Lisbon after eighty days at sea. I sat in my favorite armchair—inherited from my grandmother; exactly like one that appears in Gone with the Wind—and read the newspaper, for the first time in well over four years. Debbie laid on the couch—actually an upholstered aircraft carrier—and delightedly wiggled her toes, unable to reach anywhere near the far end. Drex is beside himself, getting reacquainted with things of which he has only the vaguest memories. Austin and Vitor brought lasagne Friday evening so Austin could play with her dolls. When they left, Vitor dutifully if bemusedly bundled the little trunk with all the tiny doll things off to the car. I was shocked by how nice it is just to be among our things. I had not realized what good campers we were being.

As a strategic measure, we put together the living room so we’d have a place to which we may retreat, even though it’s almost impossible to move around the rest of the apartment for all the boxes. As I sat in my Rhet Butler chair and looked around I thought about the story it all tells: I remembered where we bought things and when, how young we used to be, people who gave us things, how long we’ve been married. It made me glad. And thankful.

Decorating for Christmas this year means not just putting out lights and goodies from Christmases past, but unpacking our lives and arranging them so there’s someplace to hang the decorations. Christmas is a time for homecoming. God started it, by sending us His Son, so we may all go home. Getting our furniture has been a powerful reminder of His faithfulness and of how sweet that homecoming will someday be.

We pray your Advent Season is blessed and that God reveals to you, too, the magnitude of His love and care for you.