There's no place like home

My day started with a random, out of the blue email from a great friend I had in Ohio. I don't hear from her often, but treasure the little tidbits she shares. Tracy and I met at church and lamented our early parenting years over tea on a regular basis. We were certain we had all the answers until the day her three year old was upstairs yelling out her bedroom window at the traffic below (they lived on a very busy four way intersection) that her mother had her locked up there and never feeds her! That was the day said three year old used a thumb tack to punch the eyeballs out of her photographs of her mother. Let's just say we saw the teenage years with that one as something we'd rather not endure! Tracy's email stated that we were so dumb as to think that because we refused to let our kids watch Sponge Bob, they'd turn out to be good Christian kids with solid heads on their shoulders. She then stated, "they are still rotten"! I love her honesty. I have missed that lady since the day a job relocation took her to Texas, just a year before one brought us here.

I had to pick the kids up during the tornado warnings today. It was stressful to say the least. I was stuck in traffic listening to the alarms, praying we didn't need to take cover as I literally couldn't move. We were fine and our house is fine. Just up the road a few small towns, things were destroyed. Kids were trapped in a local high school for hours. All accounts as of now are that everyone is okay. The same God that was in control last week is in control this week. I repeated that truth quite a bit on the road today.

And tonight, a random text from another church friend in Ohio checking on us. I haven't talked with Lori in a long time either. It was sweet to hear from her as well. When I think about "home", our church is always forefront in my mind. That church was family to us. They carried us in the months that followed Greg's accident, through the trials and joys of life and lifted us from the babies in Christ we started out into the leaders they expected us to be. Even six years later, I still miss Salem. There is no place like home.