We've had many homes as the Army has moved us here and there. I've learned to be at home in a small apartment in a German village or a house just at the edge of the Ozarks where I watched horses graze out my back windows. I'm thankful for those experiences and all the others I didn't mention.
But I think that for every person, there is a one place on this earth that just feels like Home. Mine is definitely Tennessee. I was carried home from the hospital to a farmhouse in Rock Island, TN. Though my family built a different house on the same property when I was about 10, I lived there until I left for college at 17.
Throughout the years, as my own children have grown, we've always returned to the farm for vacations and visits with family and dear friends. A lot has changed over the years. My mom, who was the heart of our family, has been gone for over 11 years now. My dad has remarried. Old buildings have been torn down, new ones built. Familiar old trees that shaded me and my imaginary friends as we played together have died and been cut down. But the land itself does not change. I walk through the fields and the slope of the land is familiar and comforting under my feet. The smell of the air after a summer rain is exactly as I remember it from 40 years ago. And the falls at Rock Island (pictured above) are just as beautiful. I'll bet the water is just as cold as ever, too, though I didn't check that for myself on this trip!
I never understand how people can look at the earth that we live on, see the majestic beauty in both the grand vistas and in the tiny lichen that grow deep in the forest, and fail to believe that it was all created by God. I find it much more ridiculous to believe that any of those beautiful things happened by accident!
I'm glad I grew up in a beautiful little part of our big world. And someday, perhaps someday soon, I want to move back to those familiar rolling hills.
