I don't belong here.

I'm going to be honest and say first that I have no idea what I'm going to say. There. That makes me feel better, eh?

During Easter weekend we had very dear friends staying with us. The oldest of the Helwig children had borrowed A Wrinkle in Time the month before. He came back very much excited and wanted to know if there were more books by that author (Madleine L'Engle.) Anyone who knows me will not be surprised to hear that I was happy... moved... to be able to tell him that no only were there more books by the same author but that she wrote three more in that series involving Meg and Charles Wallace. These books, along with C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy and some of his others that make me excited and hopeful for our kids to see the kingdom in the everyday.

Here's the weirdness (and bear with me, I promise I have a point.) I started reading the Harry Potter books this past week. I'm a very fast reader. It's a blessing a curse, trust me. I'm on book four and already there is this world that's been created that magical and homey and makes you feel like you're there and a part of it. It's not the "magic" or the wizard or any of the surface stuff that a lot of church-going Christians disapproved of that drew me to the stories. It's the belonging. The sense of being where you're supposed to be. Harry Potter aside, there is a desire in all of us to belong, to feel at last that we've landed where we're supposed to be. That feeling of comfort. COMFORT. Of safety and relaxation and home.

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis deals with themes of moving beyond our comfort levels to get "further up and further in" to that place which makes us solid and real.  We know, as human beings, that we are meant for so much more than this. Switchfoot sings about The Beautiful Letdown - that wouldn't be so successful if it didn't ring true for so many. We don't belong here. We feel out of place. We know there is more than this. We latch on to things like Harry Potter or Narnia because they give us a sense of home or belonging. But down deep we know that there is more. More than we can sing about or write about. There is a distant place where we will finally be free to be ourselves completely. To exhale and really breathe for the first time and feel like we are finally who God, our Father and Creator, made us to be. Where we connect with Adam and Eve in the Garden. Where we finally understand what we lost but will finally find when we come home to be with the One Who Loves Us.

I know this sounds a little loony or over-the-top. But I've come to peace with the understanding that this is not what God intended for us. 

We. Screwed. Up. 

It's our fault. We mourn the death of loved ones. He welcomes us home. We live years... decades... of a half-life existence. He counts down the minutes until we're in His arms for good. We cry over what we've lost while I'm sure the "lost" rejoice when they're finally welcomed home.

I know this life is a shabby version of what awaits us. Every so often I have to cry about it and spend an evening being melancholy. But then there is something that makes me smile - a flash of heaven - an eleven year old gets excited about A Wrinkle in Time (wait... is he twelve?) And I know that there are still souls that understand that we're just biding our time in the best way we know how. We read about it and sing about it and try to recreate it in our art. It's the best we can do in the place we are for the time being.