I’m having a homesick week.

The kind of homesick where you feel it in your bones and every cell of your being craves the comfort of the known. The familiar. The expected.

Truth is, I’m homesick for my life.

I miss my office and coworkers and being able to talk to them about problems and new projects.

I miss my support system of friends who I could count on and be with at a moments notice.

I miss my house with all its 1918 charm.

I miss Virginia.

So I just want to lay that out there to start, because I’ve gotten a lot of comments lately about how perfect my life is. And I know it looks that way.

My husband has a job he loves. My children are thriving in their schools and have lots of friends. My parents and a large part of my family live an hour away. I “get” to work from home. We live in a picture-perfect area with snow and deer and beautiful sunsets in our backyard, not to mention stores that deliver groceries to our front door (I mean seriously, that is life-changing).

How on earth could I be unhappy?

I get that a lot.

In 100% full, transparent honesty, this move and the past six months of my life have broken me in ways I can’t even begin to describe.

Everything I expected for my life and my family, every dream every plan every comfort, has been blown up. What’s left in the rubble is uncertainty.

Sure, that uncertainty is taking place in a pretty house, in an ideal area, around wonderful family and new friends.

But it’s still uncertainty. It’s still painful. And I’m still broken and far from whole.

Here’s the thing about being broken though. There’s really nothing wrong with it, other than it being uncomfortable. The world tells us that broken is bad. Broken is not desirable. Broken must be fixed.

I was reading an article yesterday and it mentioned how some things in nature actually have to break in order to grow.

Think about a seed. If you plant it but it doesn’t break open, there can be no new plant from it. If it remains whole, it never reaches its full potential, or what God intended it to be.

So I guess in theory, if I don’t break, I can’t grow. I can’t grow into the whole person God intended me to be.

I feel like we spend a large part of our lives scared of breaking, don’t we? Trying to avoid falling apart. Keeping ourselves and everyone we love safe, living in fear of the hard things that could come along at any moment and change us.

But guess what? I’m already there. I’m broken. That thing we’re all scared of? It has already happened to me. And now that I’ve broken open, I’m hoping a new life is getting ready to push up out of the dirt and greet the sun.

While I’m not to the point where I can see the sunlight just yet, I have no doubt it will happen for me soon. How do I know? Well for one, 1 Peter 1:7 says:

“These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold – though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.” (NLT)

This is my favorite Biblical reference to the beauty that can be found in trials, but there are plenty of others. So this is what I’m clinging to. That this brokenness will eventually lead to wholeness. That the way I handle myself during this season of life will lead to bigger and better things.

Not just in this life, but in the next.

What about you? Have you gotten complacent? Comfortable? Have you been avoiding certain risks or opportunities out of fear of what might happen?

-Lauren