Dear friends, family, coworkers, and those that are friends that are family, those that are coworkers that are friends, and those that are friends that are coworkers that are family; actually all of my coworkers are my friends and all of my friends are my family and all of my family are my friends, I love you all so much more than I can express. This is for you all, the ones I love in my life:
Today is my last evening in Paris. Tomorrow I will bored a train to London to stay for a few nights and then head for home. Home is a word I've come to reflect on more than anything on my journey. Home is what has been the continual loop that runs thru my brain each day. With each experience and each country and each town I've been, the rhythm and look of that looping thought of home changes.
The beginning of my journey was spurred by a feeling, I hate to admit, but I must, of disconnection and displacement. I felt as though the world I existed in was moving on with out me and when I say world I mean you all. You are the world in which I live. You are what makes my world, loving and fun and comfortable and exciting. You are the ones that not only enrich my life with wisdom, love, companionship, adventure and comfort, but the ones that ARE my life. Without you all I feel the panes of emptiness in my heart and stomach that can only be described as homesick. It's hard to admit but the period of time before I left, I was slipping slowly into a dark place where I didn't think that I fit into my world anymore. I felt as though because I was now the oddity in a sea of friends newly married, newly engaged newly pregnant and newly moms, that I didn't belong. Unfortunately I began to believe this very strongly and started to give in to the dark pull to distance myself from everything and everyone.
My trip, spurred by all of these feelings, was my attempt to see where I felt good, where I needed to be, where I could exist and not feel on the outside looking in. I felt as though I was searching for a place where I fit, but as the days of my trip began, a quite severe adverse reaction began to happen in
my heart and brain. As I traveled, I began to stack these new things and experiences next to my life and my home, and I began to see the magnificent beauty of home. I began to see the extraordinary in my life and the people who are part of that life in such a close and intimate way.
I saw things on my journey that I had seen only from a distance, in photos and stories and books, and as I came to each place, each town, each monument, and each experience I realized what I had been doing. I had romanticized the idea of everything and had been longing for something that didn't exist.
Im sitting hear now in a cafe in Paris, on a small patio watching the rain fall over the busy parisian street, overlooking the Eiffel tour twinkling in the distance from across the water. The idea, yes, is very romantic and dreamy. People, as I once did, long to be sitting here sipping coffee and watching the twinkling tour, but for me I sit hear, after half a month of traveling, longing for home, and longing for the people in my life who I very mistakenly tried to distance myself from, who I very mistakenly believed I didn't fit into their life.
You know, going to the Eiffel tour and gazing at it from a distance I've discovered are two very different things. As one visits the Eiffel tower, the closer you get the more it becomes just a massive towering structure of twisted metal dropped in the missed of a sea of tourists lining up to buy over priced memorabilia from stands flooding the grounds below. You stand there watching the floods of people waiting in line for a chance to climb the tower so you can check it off your list. Close up, it's quite an ugly scene, but i suppose always from afar in this cafe it is beautiful. I realized as I thought of this interesting twist, that this is how I have been viewing life. I have romanticized what traveling would be, longing for something that doesn't really exist in London or in Amsterdam or even Paris. It exists in my home. What I'm looking for exists where I left in the first place. What I'm looking for exists in my friends and family and coworkers and all of those combinations in between. I was looking for love but I found that I had it all a long. I found that the further away I got from home the more I longed for home. One country after the other and the more my stomach ached and my heart shriveled for my friends and family.
Yesterday morning I climbed the hill in Mont Mart to Sucre Cure, a beautiful church atop a sea of never ending stairs overlooking all of Paris. There, I spent some time with God. Normally to spend time with God I have no need for large towering structures with a thousand foot ceilings and large stained glass windows, but yesterday was different. Yesterday I was in Paris, and not only was I in Paris, I was in the town of Mont Mart,one of the oldest and most beautiful places in all of Paris.
I sat in Sucre Cure and as mass began, I closed my eyes to the beautiful music streaming from angelic nuns robed in white amidst golden candles and ambient light. I closed my eyes and asked for God to be with me, even for just a moment, and as I did the calm of the spirt came over me, almost as if I was being put to sleep. As I sat, eyes closed, I saw a tree, a large expanding oak tree. It was rooted deep in the ground with roots stretching in all directions, and branches that reached so far they stretched across states and even the oceans. Although God many times has explained to me before how I am the tree, I asked Him again, "what does this picture mean?". He replyed, with a sweet and soft voice, "You are rooted in your home. It is where I have planted you. It is where you have grown, and gotten strong and expanded. It is where you have grown fruit and given fruit and offer shade. It is where you are fed and watered and the climate that suits you the best. You may not have been born there in the physical flesh but born there in the spirit. You knew you were to be born there in the spirt and you followed my voice to the spot of your birth and because of that you have grown tall. Your branches are comfort and shade for many, and although you don't always think so, you are loved and cherished by the ones you give shade. You are loved and cherished by the ones you offer fruit and loved and cherished by the ones that rest in your branches. You are a tree with roots and branches and shade and fruit. Your branches may stretch across states and oceans and country's but your home is in the soil where you were born in me. Because your roots are sturdy your branches offer home to many.
I opened my eyes and still felt the presence of God as I wandered out the massive stone archway and down the great river of steps flowing up to Sucre Cure. What a neat thing to be a tree, and not only a tree, but a tree planted in southern California, the place of dreams. A tree watered and fed by Jesus and the most wonderful amazing friends and family I know.
To be short I would have said I was homesick, and missed you all, but to be long, well, this is it.
I am truly sorry to you all for believing such an awful lie. Thank you all for being such an amazing part of my life. Thank you for being my family when I needed family. Thank you for being support when I needed to be held up. Thank you for giving me a shoulder to cry on an arm to rest on and an ear to relieve to. Thank you for reading this, for loving me, and for being my world. I am so blessed to know you all and to call you all friends. Thank you God for building the body of Christ and putting us all together so lovingly and intricately and perfectly. Thank you God for the love in my life. I feel truly blessed.
Miss you, love you,and see you all very soon!
Your friend,
Lauren
