nearly six years I lived in Scotland and the cold weather just grew on me. Not so much when you were at work, but when you looked forward to going home. Jumping into comfy and warm clothes, getting all snugly on the sofa next to the fireplace, watching the snow outside or just listening to the rain. In one hand you will have a magazine or book, or a warm cup of coffee maybe hot chocolate. Mine was usually filled with a glass of single malt whiskey or a good red wine as I learned to truly appreciate it.

For a while this is always good and life goes on, but eventually it is not enough anymore. It is not that something is wrong with you all of a sudden. Yet we might think we have an issue to fix. So I change my brand of malt whiskey or buy more expensive wine, even think about moving house. Yet what truly is happening is so simple, is so natural and is never going to get “fixed”. I am lonely. We were created for relationship. This is and always will be at the core of your being. We are driven to be part of something, be it another person, a group, an organization or committee.

Yet until you find yourself, who you truly are, you can be part of something and feel an unexplainable loneliness. So you find yourself not wanting to go home to your partner, because you feel so lonely when you are there. On weekends you always invite friends over to avoid being alone with your partner. And how this leads to arguments!

It just feels like you can never win, like nothing you try can fix this issue that you are experiencing. And the loneliness within yourself just grows bigger and your home just feels colder and emptier. Yet the longing for home and the longing for relationship never disappears. The reality of life is that the search for relationship is to be found, not with someone else or something else, but within yourself. The relationship you have with yourself is the only possible relationship you can have with anyone or anything around you and the only relationship you can have with God also.

Erwin R McManus explains that home is ultimately not a out a place to live but about the people with whom you are most fully alive. Home is about love, relationship, community, and belonging, and we are all searching for home. It all starts with loving yourself, accepting yourself and then being committed to being who God created you to be. Be fully alive with you! This asks of you to step into your reality, stop making excuses and giving justifications for everything, and then through being honest with yourself seek the truth and commit to that in action. The journey awaits you to find your way home. God is waiting there for you. You are worth it!