Home is a shady tree. Home is a pen and notebook. Home is a grassy knoll.
Home is realizing you don’t have anyone else to forgive. You’ve gotten to that place where you’ve faced the hurts and disappointments, the whacks and knocks or bad hands dealt, and you’ve released it all. You’ve forgiven your parents for what they did wrong or for what they didn’t do right. You’ve forgiven yourself for not living up to your expectations and then you’ve forgiven yourself for being too harsh with yourself.
Home is forgiving the school bus driver for the weird looks and weird comments and just for being weird. Why did he pull the bus over and officiate a wedding between eighth graders? That’s weird.
Home is clean. It’s clean floors and corners but mostly it’s a cleared out heart. It’s about grieving fully but not staying there forever, letting the lies slide off of you.
Home is seeing your accuser and abuser with compassion. It doesn’t mean you condone it or position yourself for more of their garbage, but for some curious reason that you can’t point to: you love them in spite of it. That’s home.
Home is a dog-eared book that you find at a Goodwill, flip it open: crisp serif type, gorgeous margins, creamy pages, a sensory wash of literary delight.
Home is Gal Gadot. Home is Ralph Lauren in double denim: faded jeans, jean shirt, a wash of white hair on bronzed skin.
Home is that fluorescent table in the Harris Teeter Starbucks. It’s the least cool place in the world. But you’re there right now and that makes it absolutely amazing.
Ralph Lauren in Double Denim:
