Headed Home: Getting Held Up Going the Wrong Way in a Hurry
Life is about transitions toward our final destination. Carole and I continue to have them for our life and work.
Our newest workoffice for GracePoint is in the North Carolina farm home where Carole's mom and dad lived for over 62 years. I'm very conscious that I now work in the place where the Coltranes brought Carole home from the hospital 58 years ago, where she jabbered and toddled about as a child, started school, became a teenager, and did her homework for 12 years. This is a special place.
The Coltranes are special people. They work hard, have integrity, and care about family. Dad and Mom Coltrane invested their lives making a living on this farm while raising three children. This world could not want for better people than Steve, Carole, and Dianne.
I transitioned Carole away from North Carolina for a lot of years, first to Florida, then to Georgia. But she is back home now, called here by her love for family, and especially to be closer to her mom.
This is our third week here, and after so many years away, Carole still is in "bewonderment" that she is not just visiting here for a short weekend, but has transitioned back home
It will take a while for her psyche to catch up. For 17 years she drove over 200,000 miles to and from her office at The Salvation Army in Atlanta, sometimes in bumper to bumper traffic for two hours a day. She now enjoys a 15 minute drive to her office on mostly scenic country roads. It has been a good transition.
When we bought our first house in Atlanta, it was Carole's dream house and in a great community. Then after several years, I talked her into transitioning to a different home in order to accommodate the work we wanted to do with GracePoint. Her belongings transitioned before her head and heart did. Returning home from her office the first day after we moved, she drove her old route right back to her dream house and pulled into the driveway before she realized her dream house was no longer home. She called to say she was being held up.
I understand that. Returning home from my first trip to Atlanta last week, I stopped for gas, to stretch, and etcetera at a favorite half-way point where Carole and I almost always stopped on our return to Atlanta from weekend visits to North Carolina. Traveling alone and in a hurry, I returned to the car and headed back south toward Atlanta with eager thoughts of soon being home for the weekend. Only home was no longer south, but north. I backtracked for thirty-two miles before it occurred to me that I was headed in the wrong direction. Carole called to ask my whereabouts. I said I got held up.
That evening while waiting patiently at a downtown traffic light, Carole again expressed her delight that we did not need to rush our visit to hurry back to Atlanta, but were home.
"Do you feel you are home?" she asked.
I answered that home is where the heart is, where we are at peace, and in the place where God transitions us to on our way to Heaven.
"We are not home yet," I said, "but in the right place and headed in the right direction."
Don Loy Whisnant/Journey Notes 8K15
