YEARNING For His Return

Bramasole.

I know. That’s a ‘B’ word and we‘re on ‘Y‘ today. But it's an Italian word that came to me in the middle of a cold winter in which it aptly described my mood. It means to yearn for the sun.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the “sun” in the definition that attracted me. It was the verb.

I know what yearning looks like. I’ve seen it in the life of my young friend, Heather, whose husband of just two years was recently deployed to Afghanistan. For ten long months she has looked for, longed for, anticipated and imagined his homecoming. She has yearned for his return.

Not that she hasn’t been busy in the interim. Surrounded by a group of extremely supportive friends, she’s occupied her time with the same things that fill most young adults’ days - working, shopping, watching movies, hanging out together in restaurants and various other recreational pursuits. But always somewhere in the back of her mind she’s been dreaming of the day her soldier walks back into her life and her arms. I’ve seen it on her face in slow moments at our grocery store jobs, an unguarded look that shows her mind and heart to be a million miles away…tears on her face over another holiday spent alone…and daydream-y posts on Facebook detailing things they’ll do once he’s back in the States. That moment is never far from her thoughts.

And now that day has arrived. He’s home and she’s happy, not that she’s hugged him yet. His first stop upon his arrival was a 10-day stay at an army base in Texas. But today he’s finally headed for Ohio to be reunited with his waiting wife. We’ve been counting down the days with her at work this last week or so, agonizing with her last night as her final shift before a week’s vacation dragged by every so slowly. Today she’s headed first to the salon to have her hair done, and then she’s off to pick him up. She’s been smiling for 24 hours straight, jumps when you talk to her, and laughs at everything that’s said. I couldn’t be happier for her.

But back to bramasole. I wrote the word and its definition in the Italian Words and Phrases to be Learned section of my journal, and suddenly laughed at the result. I had mistakenly written the word sun as son.

On second thought, I realized it wasn’t an error after all. It simply flowed out of a heart that is likewise looking for the return of a loved One who has been far away for a very long time. In the dark and dreary winter that our world has become, we’re yearning for the return of the Son who is coming for his Bride and will likewise carry her away.

Heather and her bridegroom are headed to the beach for a week. We get to spend eternity with ours. I’m simply counting the days.

“You also be patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of your Lord draws near.”
(James 5:8 MKJV)

Longing to RETURN

The list simply grows and grows.

Three weeks into The Challenge, one of the most delightful results of the whole effort now poses a challenge of its own. I have too many sites I want to return to on a regular basis to fit into the blogging hours of the day! After years of solitary posting, this new community of like-minded friends calls to me repeatedly and insistently to come and play. I give in to visit “just one more” before heading off to accomplish another task on my to-do list, promising myself the reward of another one once the less pleasant job is done. Visiting competes with writing for my blogging attention on a regular basis now.

Part of the draw is the traveling of my own heart as it skips from blog to blog. Two days ago it went back to family vacations at Disneyland as my sister penned her “People Watching” post from a conference she was attending there (Musings from Dot). A day earlier my new blogging buddy Tammy (HeartString Quilts) took me back to my days of living on the west coast in her “Oregon” post. And early on in the Challenge fellow music lover Horst (Tangents) filled my memory with melodies I love in his “Classical Music” post. My mind stops to visit and my heart goes along for the ride.

Heart travels were therefore already on my mind last evening when a flesh-and-blood new friend visiting our home for the first time talked about the places his had been lately. He noted that when he was in full pursuit of the presence of God in his life, things had been going well for him. Since he had turned his attention elsewhere, his life had nose-dived into a downward spiral. He was simply longing to return to a spot where he once found peace and comfort, joy and rest.

Places of the heart call to us all, and whether we attempt to identify those longings with people or places or particular moments in our past, they eventually can be traced to a God-shaped longing to return to Love we once knew. The Bible says that even Creation groans to be reunited with its Maker at His return, and neither can we as part of that Creation escape the pull of our heavenly heartstrings. The longer we live, the more strongly they draw us, until the tent-pegs that keep us grounded in this physical reality are pulled at the moment of our death, and our spirits can finally wing their way Home.

“That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.”
(Romans 8:18-21 TM)