Last night I was driving back from work. I enjoy my shift, starting at 3:30 and getting off at 11:30. I never have to sit frustrated in bumper to bumper traffic. Especially when I get off and midnight is approaching, it is a different world.
I roll my windows down.
This, my soundtrack:
The lights are soft, even slightly blurry because of the tiredness in my eyes. Luckily, the drive is only fifteen minutes and the air is cool on my skin.
I look around at the lights, at this familiar road that has quickly become a well-worn path.
and I know I don’t have to run away.
the thought splits open something inside of me, something deep and painful.
Some longing, some dissatisfaction I have always known to be there.
I have always just thought it was a part of me,
that it was my lot in life to wander,
that I couldn’t be me without constantly changing locations,
that I could never ever settle down.
but lately, I’ve felt a rare sense.
A sense of coming home.
And I know it has nothing to do with my “status” in life.
It has nothing to do with my location I set on my facebook, having a job, or whether my suitcases remain packed or stored in the closet.
It has little to do with a steady, committed, loving relationship, though I know that has changed me in ways I can’t even describe.
I know I don’t need to run away because I am finally ok with myself.
I am at peace.
I have everything I need.
Because you see, this Grace that found me, it swallowed my life-long fear.
It has settled my anxious wandering heart that is always hunting for the next thing, the next place, the next person that I thought would ease my pain.
“You don’t have to run away,”
I whisper to the night air on the highway, to myself, to the little girl in me that longs for home.
And I finally believe it.
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