Home

One glorious afternoon about 10 years ago, Morgan and I were on the beach in Cancun.  We had spent the entire day on the beachfront property of our hotel.  Just as the sun was beginning to set, we witnessed some baby turtles crawling their way out of the sand toward the Caribbean Sea.

As we watched these determined newborns stumble and dig their way toward the water, I remember thinking... they are so cute.  I wanted to help them, yet at the same time, I thought, "Are you sure you want to go that way?"  Don't you know the sea can be a dangerous place for a baby turtle?"

When a sea turtle is pregnant, she crawls out of the sea and spends hours digging a hole in the sand in which to lay her 50-200 eggs.  Then she takes off, back to the ocean.  After a few weeks, the babies hatch.  They are born in a hole in the sand, with no mama, not knowing where they are and surrounded by others who don't know anything either.  I would imagine they feel a little disoriented.    

But they must know that that hole is not their home.  

It's uncomfortable, crowded and dark.  It really doesn't work for them at all.  They instinctively start to crawl out of this place where they don't belong.  Crawling is hard in the sand, with everyone pushing each other.  Their tiny bodies have to go over seemingly huge barriers and past stragglers, as fast as possible because there are a million creatures out there that might eat them.  I'm sure it feels like an eternity.  

When am I going to be there?  
(they think in their tiny turtle brains).  

How long is it going to take?  Why am I here all alone?  Where is it again that we are even going?  

But they keep moving, straining forward, crawling toward what they believe they were created for.  

But what were they created for?  

If they are not made to stay in the sand, then how do they know what home is like?  

What if they just stayed, decided that it was all just a myth- that great watery deep?  After all, no other turtle they've met has ever seen it?  What if they decided it was just going to be too hard?  Or what if, instead of following the voice we know to be God's telling them to move toward the water, they followed a crowd of confused turtles moving toward the lights of a hotel or highway?  

If they do not follow the voice inside them, they will miss the world they were truly created for, the joy that God has in store for them there.  The ocean.
-page 66-67, Anything by jennie allen.   

Yesterday, I helped Faith remove a deeply lodged splinter from the bottom of her foot.  It required a needle and tweezers.  She cried, a lot.  As she endured the pain, she openly voiced her desire to be in heaven- right now.  She no longer wanted the discomforts of this world.
Her "in the moment" hurting heart longed to be... home.

There is something about needles and pain and fear and discomfort that does not feel like home.

It feels difficult, sandy, dark and cramped.

It reminds us... we were not created for this world.