I wonder if I will ever get to a point where I am not longing for my childhood home. 

As I drive through the Redwoods and down along the coast of California, I’m always comparing it–how the sun falls just so, in familiar lines through the trees on Sawmill Road. 

“What do we do with our longing?” It’s a rhetorical question on our group chat.

Where do we place it? It’s not sadness. It’s not happiness. 

Maybe that’s why it’s easier to eliminate it. 

It’s easier to scratch the itch. “If it will make you happy, just do it,” people say. So I buy a million skin care products and bake a dozen cookies at 9 PM until I’m broke and sick to my stomach. 

“Look to God and be satisfied,” others say–and it sounds like another version of the same thing. 

If I looked to Him and didn’t long for more, would it really be Him that I’m seeing?

“Longing is sort of like grief,” I talk through it with her. The process is painful. But without it, our loss would have no meaning. 

Maybe that’s why half the reason I read books is to finish them, but sometimes I cry because I do. 

Maybe that’s why I constantly anticipate the start of the leaves turning colour, but regret when they fall. 

Maybe that’s why I’d love someone even if I’ve lost someone. 

“All the best things in life are hard, but they bring a lot of meaning.” That is the conclusion I have about marriage, having children and friendships. 

Living with longing is the side effect of living with meaning. 

And the inkling that there is Something More.

And one day I’ll turn down the old highway and onto Sawmill Road once again, and see how the sun falls just so in those familiar lines through the trees, and still feel it deeply, that longing for Home. 

“My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord…” Psalm 84:2