Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice-President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

     I am on the road this week, and if all has gone as planned I am driving today – all day – through the beautiful hills of Virginia (somewhere in there is a song…) In the past few days and weeks I have been with a number of people who are deeply devoted to healing with love. Many days have been filled with long and meaninful conversations. Some days I have driven many miles, counted lots of cows and marveled at the wondrous and deep hues of sunset. Where I have lately spent my nights has been comfortable but it isn't home. I know where I belong but I am pulled to other places, in many directions. Some days I understand what my grandmother used to describe as feeling "tired to the bone."

     In conversations with loving and devoted caregivers, found working in hospitals and charities large and small, I have heard too many overwhelmed and fragmented hearts crying for rest. The exhaustion is physical but also emotional, mental, and spiritual exhaustion described often as fatigue but almost always expressed as a complete disintegration of self and a sense of crisis within and without.

     If you've read many of my journal entries you know Henri Nouwen is among my favored authors, one I have recently savored in my reading and re-reading. He has described this crisis of our lives saying "most of us have an address but cannot be found there." Too much demands our attention and, as Nouwen has noted, "all these other things lead us so far from home that we eventually forget our true address, that is, the place where we can be addressed." This is the condition for too many of us – busy yet unconnected, filled yet unfulfilled, all over the place yet never at home.

     Love responds to our condition and wants to bring us back to the place we belong. Home is where we are known and welcomed by Love, and it is there that we truly find rest. Borrowing from Nouwen's words, I am, like you, a traveler "on the way to a sacred place" where Love holds me and welcomes me home, to the place where I belong. It's comforting to find you along the way, to walk with you, together…on the way home.