I sit here in my tired high heels that I trade in for flip flops at a boarding gate waiting on the flight that’s been delayed. It’s been a grand two days of dreaming big and beautiful visions for (in)courage with the DaySpring team and my heart is full of the wonder of being useful.

Two rows in front of me four cleaners sit and review their day in lilting Spanish. There’s the couple sharing a laptop, her head leaned against his shoulder and the man eating pizza piping hot out of the box.

There are the PA announcements that everyone tunes out and my fear that this flight will be delayed again and it will be long past midnight before I can open the door to home. Because when you’ve been gone two days from two boys, one baby girl and the dad that’s been wrangling them solo, suddenly it doesn’t matter that your house is a rental and will likely be a wreck in the wake of you having been away.

All that matters is the four people breathing dreams in their beds without you.

All that matters is racing the clock home.

All that matters is waking her up in the sleepy dark and letting her take her place again on your chest so that you can inhale her peace, her wispy hair and that dimple in her right cheek.

All that matters is kneeling on the floor next to a bunk bed full of limp boys’ limbs and kissing their knees, their hands curled in silent prayer, their hair all hot and damply stuck to their foreheads.

All that matters is getting to crawl into the warm sheets next to the man you’ve known since before you  thought you’d ever want kids.

This is home.

There’s still one boarding gate between me and the people that are the bricks and mortar of the place where my heart is at home. Still one dark stretch of sky. Still one taxi ride.

Perhaps sometimes our hearts need a bird’s eye view of the place we too often take for granted. We need to see it from the heavenly perspective to realize that each house looks pretty much alike from 30,000 miles up. We are all part of the patchwork quilt of subdivisions, high rises, farms, apartments, fixer-uppers, mansions, and basement flats . All just checkered squares of so many greens and browns stitched together by the drive we share to build this thing called home.

Because wipe away all those walls and floors and levels that divide us and you’re left with the cement that holds us upright in the storm. The faces and hugs and lisped words of love that tell us we belong.

I am flying home to them as fast as I can.

I would walk if I had to.

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