It's All Bountiful

For probably 15 years, The Trip To Bountiful has been one of my all-time favorite movies. 

In case you missed it, it's the story of an elderly woman who longs to return to the farm where she grew-up. The farm--and her favorite memories--are all in the country town called Bountiful, a place, all these years later, which has pretty much collapsed into the ground. 

Yet, through determination and planning, Mrs. Watts finally escapes the tiny city apartment she shares with her son and his wife, back to the farm she loved.

I've no real clue why I wipe tears away the whole last half-hour every single viewing. For me, there is no old home place. No house anywhere, no town I call home, other than where I presently live. And mostly, I feel grateful.

While I was growing-up, my family moved too often--we never lived in the same house or town for even three years. (No, my dad wasn't in the military--he was in that other transient occupation. He was a pastor.) Later, when I married, although Tom and I lived in a California mountain town nine years together, then in Nevada for five, still, we never lived in the same house for three years, either.

Not until this house did we unpack our hearts and all our boxes. Not until here did I allow myself to fall in love with what amounts to walls and floors and windows.

And yet, truthfully? My heart is still a very transient being. Deep inside I feel half at home and half already-moved. I long for a new adventure--and a window over the kitchen sink. A clothesline and land enough to keep a dog, perhaps--at least more land than just a driveway separating my house from the neighbors'.

And although this old-fashioned Buffalo suburb has, for 14 years, afforded me a dream-come-true lifestyle reminiscent of the 1940's, still, it will never be my Bountiful, where, like Mrs. Watts, I plan,scheme and yearn to return to some long year ahead.

My own private Bountiful is the place wherever God leads me for however long or short. God is always on the move in lots of ways and I want to move along with Him, not growing stale or seeping all la-de-da-cluelessly in dead, dry tradition.

And besides, my Real Home isn't anywhere near here at all, anyway. It's oh so very, very far away.


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"Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands." ... 2 Corinthians 5:1