Waking to Tears

All of us born into this world have cried ourselves to sleep. Generally this gets less as we get into adulthood; but it ebbs and flows a bit even then (at least in my experience). But I had a new experience this past week as I woke up crying. This is rather unusual for me. It was connected to a rather long and complicated dream that involved wandering around in a dimly lit church and peering through windows into various rooms. I think I was looking for where I was supposed to be and I didn't really have a clue where that "room" was nor did I know what it would look like when I got there. I finally ended up in a room with two of my dear friends where we watched some sort of video on a laptop that seemed to have no bearing on the rest of the dream except that by the end of it I was sobbing and begging my friends to let me go home and just to send me home.

It was this longing and anguish of heart that I woke with. I was surprised to find my face wet and my pillow wetter. It was strange because the intensity of the feeling was so strong that it feels almost foreign to me and detached from myself. I can feel it even now remembering the dream, but nothing in my life currently corresponds with that level of emotion. Sure, I miss Iraq and the people there, it feels a bit like home, but God hasn't sent me back there and most of the time I'm ok with that. It isn't my hometown because that hasn't felt like home in years. Where else could it be? 

I may be a bit of a mystic, I guess, but I think taken in context I want to go Home as in, with God. I don't know my purpose or my future here on Earth, I am tired of sin and corruption and evil and never fitting in anywhere. It isn't that my life here is difficult because it isn't. It isn't that I'm not loved and cared for, because I am. It's just that I know it will be so much better to be with God. I feel like I know the taste of Paul's words that he would rather be at home with the Lord. And yet, I also know that, for now at least, he has not chosen for me to be there, but here. So I must be patient even though I wake with tears. 

"For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil." ~from 2 Corinthians 5