Home. Again.

Home. I even just like the sound of the word as it presses off my tongue. Home. Home.

Spring Break has finally arrived. The weeks leading up to this one were so incredibly full of homework and floor events and floor needs and relational tension and inner chaos. So full. I should have been writing through that time, but I didn't because my schedule was also full. But here I am at home. And a different kind of full meets me. Full, at home, means my stomach and my heart and my thoughts and my joy and my smile. Full. Home.

I don't come here pretending home is perfect. As many of you know, home has been a place of mystery and confusion for me over the last year. It's not that the people in my family are frustrating or disloyal or anything of that nature (though, like me, they all have their moments...). It's this awkward season of breaking away and learning to be my own person. Eww, that even sounds horrible. I don't want to be my own person! I want my mom to forever pick out my clothes and make my lunch and my dad to drive me to school and help me with my homework! But that's the season I'm in. Breaking away. Learning to see where I came from objectively. Deciding what to take with and what to leave behind. And oh, it's a heart wrenching time.

I've had a lot of conversations with my parents recently, ones I would rather say we ended superbly. But they didn't. In this season, I find myself arguing and pressing and pushing and being a tiresome grouch. I'm a fighter and I like to pick fights. Last night, daddy and I had another one of these conversations. This time it was about feminism. We agree about Biblical standards for men and women in the church and in the home, both in principal and practical application. But we define the word differently. So, I argued that with him, arguing like a I would fight it to the death. Like I said, I'm a fighter. In the end, I was broken. I said, "Daddy, I don't want to be a fighter. I don't want to fight with you. I don't want to cause dissension just for the sake of argument. I don't like this fighter in me."

And he looked at me with his gentle brown eyes and said, "Ame, it's not that you're a fighter. It's that you haven't learned how to fight, and you won't until you realize maybe God is raising you to be a rebel with a cause. Find that cause. And fight."

Siiiiggggghhhhh....

He's right. He's always right.

I'm so overwhelmed by my parents love and care for me. And that's what makes this breaking away season so hard. It would be so much easier if I could demonize them and say they were horrible parents and walk away. Yes, that would be easier than this rending of something so sweet, this pulling away of something so cherished. It's a death, really. The season of my childhood is ending. And I mourn its passing.

So tonight as I laid at the foot of my parents bed, with Grace laying square atop me, listening to the deep resonance of daddy's voice read Little House on the Prairie - for the umteenth time- I watched my mama fall asleep. Slowly and contentedly. I noticed again how beautiful she is and how peaceful she is when all her babies are home. And I was again thankful to be one of them.