Be it ever so humble...

It's good to be home. After a week at Maranatha, our house was a very welcome sight. At 2:30 in the morning, even more so. I enjoyed being away for a little while and spending time with my immediate and extended family. I must admit that I thought about work more this vacation than I had on any other. I'm not really sure why that was, but I think I just felt that I had too many loose ends waiting for me there. A consequence of mentally bringing work on vacation was that the vacation itself wasn't really all that relaxing. The paradox is that I felt like I needed to get back to work to relax. Honestly, it was a bit of a relief to get back to the office and return to the comfort of the everyday routine. I still haven't been able to truly relax, with a week's worth of work waiting for me and every evening spent watching baseball/softball games, but I'm home. That's where I can rest.

We spent several hours Sunday visiting with some old friends, Paul and Jana Wasmund. They were in town from Florida where they had moved six years ago. We sat with them at church in the morning and in the afternoon we met back up with them at Klayton and Tonya Southwood's house for some BBQ and games. (The glory days of the Eastview orchestra were when Paul, Klayton and I made up 3/4 of a pretty good trombone section.) One of Tonya's favorite games to play with a crowd is "The Newlywed Game" , which Dawn and I usually either win or finish second. At almost 13 years we were the newly-est wed couple that played and we won easily. One of the questions asked to the women was "Would your husband rather stay home or go out for a night on the town?" I guess I'm pretty obvious of my preference because everybody knew that the question could have stopped after the word "or" and my answer would have been the same. I like to stay home.

I don't go out. Restaurants are too expensive, concerts are too loud (or expensive), and crowds are constricting. I don't go out with the guys, probably because I don't have any guys. I enjoy being home with my wife and children. We play games, we watch movies, we talk, we read, we have fun. I like these people, and I think they like me. I even enjoy being home by myself. (At least I think I do - it doesn't happen very often.) You won't catch me traveling the world just for fun. Why would I leave the country? I speak the language here. I don't even want to leave the state very much. The people I know are here. Shoot, I'm tired of going to Peoria once a week. To me it's obvious, home is the best place. Why wouldn't I want to stay home? All my stuff is there.

Most people would scoff at the idea that I spent even a portion of my vacation longing to be home. They would probably ridicule the thought that any other destination could be better than my present location. As we heard at Maranatha last week, this life is just a clean bus station. We're on the way home. I can't wait to get there.