A Perpetual Longing

A Perpetual Longing

It stays with you,
this place you left behind,
these faces, these stories,
these souls your heart somehow knew before you ever knew their names.

And coming home can feel like grief.
The suitcases are unpacked,
the laundry is done,
the calendar fills again,
but something in you
has not quite come home.

Because there,
we were awake in a different way.
Purpose ran deep.
Every conversation mattered.
Every prayer carried weight.
We gave ourselves away
and somehow found more of who we were.

And now we wonder
if we left a piece of ourselves
somewhere across the ocean.

Maybe we did.

Or maybe
we discovered a piece of ourselves
that was always there,
waiting to be awakened.

So perhaps coming home
is not about leaving Germany behind.
Perhaps it is learning
to carry Germany with us.

To carry the friendships.
The laughter.
The prayers.
The courage.
The compassion.
The willingness to slow down
and truly see another person.

To carry that deep sense of purpose
into ordinary mornings,
into work,

into school,

into church,
into our families,
into the people God places
right in front of us.

Because, praise God,
we will never be quite the same.
And maybe that is the point.

I have learned
to live with a perpetual sense of longing.

Longing for the people
who are far away.
Longing for conversations
that cannot happen over coffee.
Longing for another embrace,
another shared prayer,
another moment when heaven
seemed just a little closer.

But here is the beautiful truth:
God was not more present in Germany
than He is here.

He did not stay behind
when we boarded the plane.

He came home with us.

He is in the friendships we miss,
and in the friendships waiting for us here.
He is in the people we met across the ocean,
and in the people we have loved for years.
He is in every place
where two hearts meet
and the Holy Spirit within each of them

recognizes himself.

So if you are grieving the ending,
give yourself permission to grieve.

If you miss them,
let yourself miss them.

If home feels strangely ordinary,
remember that you are not the same person
who left.

The mission did not end
when the plane landed.

Perhaps the mission now
is to let what God awakened in us
become part of how we live here.

Take the love home.
Take the purpose home.
Take the relationships home.
Take the hunger for God home.

And when the longing comes,
as I know it will,
let it remind you:

You have been changed.
Your heart has grown wider.
Your world has grown larger.
And God’s kingdom
has become a little more personal.

So we carry it with us.

Germany in our memories.
Our people in our prayers.
And God,
everywhere.

Always here.
Always there.
Always with us.

And perhaps
this perpetual longing
is not something we need to cure.

Perhaps it is simply
the ache of a heart
that has learned
how beautiful it is
to belong to people
all over the world.