Well, I soon will be packing up from Huntsville and heading to see family again for the holidays. As I get older, I appreciate these times even more, even as I have the desire to stay in my own locale for the holidays. Don’t get me wrong–I want to see my parents, my brother, and other members of my family for Christmas. However, I would just as much like to see the people in my own church, to get the Christmastime traditions of Aldersgate down pat. I never get to see what it’s like here.
Of course, that’s a truism from every place I’ve ever lived. I can’t remember a Christmas “at home” before I was in college, really. We’ve often lived far from Mississippi and Alabama, so we “came home” for the holidays. When Dad retired from the Air Force in ‘90, we moved to the South, but we continued to have Christmas either in Guin or Laurel, depending on the rotation we tried to set up.

Sure, this is a stress we all have. But once, just once, I would like to be in my own church on Christmas Eve, celebrating the birth of a man who changed the world some two millenia. Home is where the heart is, and my heart is torn between here and there.

I will follow the piece of my heart that lies away from Huntsville for yet another year.