Tuesday, July 8, 2008

What's Wrong With Me?

Lately I have just felt weird. Out of place everywhere I go. Like a fish out of water. It feels like a significant amount of my life has been spent searching for home. And here I am again. I just want to go home. I just want to feel like I am home.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, Biffy. Have you heard that new(ish) country song "I Wanna Go Home"? I like it. Anyway, I checked out your coupon links and they're pretty cool.

matt said...

You could be like Dori and find a fish that makes you feel like you are home...

pappasan said...

Maybe, biffy, you just need a night out with your sister and b-i-l. Let one of our older children babysit, and we can go out for awhile. A change of pace may be good for all of us.

Alyssa Rock said...

Your comments reminded me of the following passage from Elder Bruce C. Hafen's book The Broken Heart:

"I was once a stake visitor in a sacrament meeting where a member of a temple presidency was talking thoughtfully about the temple. Just before his talk the choir had sung 'O My Father.' As he was about to finish, I received a message inviting me to say a few words before the meeting closed. I began reflecting about the temple, asking myself what it really meant to me. I found myself thinking of it in these terms: the temple---a symbol that we are not of this world; a place where earth and heaven meet; a place where homesick children think of home.

"The singing of 'O My Father' had also stimulated my memory to recall, for some reason, an evening in the home of a warm, bright, and sensitive woman in Germany. As missionaries, we had gone to her home for a peaceful few minutes of refreshment and conversation with her family following their baptism. Because she spoke fluent English, she had added some Tabernacle Choir records to her collection during her investigation of the Church. The records were playing in the background as we sat together and talked about our blessings. When the choir began to sing a beautiful, moving arrangement of 'O My Father,' we stopped visiting and sate back to listen to the hymn. When it was over, we were all a little misty-eyed.

"Then she told us in quiet, reverent tones that listening to this song had been a major turning point in her prayerful quest to receive the restored gospel. She told us about the German word Sehnsucht, a poignant, meaningful word that has no equivalent in English. I suppose the closes translation would be "longing for home," but the German word has elements of both longing and searching. She told us that during most of her life she had felt a strange longing for home--a Sehnsucht---that had often made her melancholy and at times a little lonely; but she had never been able to identify that for which she longed. She had been impressed with the occaional references to such a feeling in the writings of some European authors, who thought the Sehnsucht might have something to do with an innate, almost subconscious human yearning to make contact with the essence of nature and meaning in a universal, cosmic sense.

"The first time she heard the choir sing this song, she instinctively knew what her longing was and where it came from: 'Yet ofttimes a secret something whispered, "You're a stranger here," and I felt that I had wandered from a more exalted sphere... But until the key of knowledge was restored, I knew not why.' Then, 'When I leave this frail existence,... Father, mother, may I meet you.' As she described it, I too felt the Sehnsucht and knew where it came from.... [At this point he discusses how the Atonement helps us return home.]

"My present sense of the Sehnsucht, as poignant and piercing as it can be, has become the source of my deepest possible motivation. It reminds me that everything but the gospel is temporary. That kind of pain, that kind of homesickness, is a feeling I never want to lose. If I lose it through my rationalizing, through my behavior, or through my treating lightly the things of God, I know that when the great and dreadful day comes when all our knees will bow together, that very pain will return with full-blown and everlasting intensity.

"So I want to remain vulnerable to those painful realities that inevitably come with facing the truth, with learning, with growing, and with loving. Pain of that kind helps me remember that I am in contact with life as it was meant to be experienced, thus preparing me more fully for that appointed reunion with those who sent me here---when, at last, my joy may be full" (86-89).

Laura said...

That is food for the soul for sure Alyssa! - Thanks for posting it! When people ask me where I'm from, I tell them Heaven. I don't feel like I am "FROM" a state anymore. A lot of times I feel as you are feeling when there have been changes occuring in my life. We've had to move,good friends of ours have had to move, my kids are doing new and different things, Gabe's job changes, it is a wierd feeling - just as you describe it....or maybe for me, it has been that way for a long time, but when changes occur - I have these realizations again. We miss you guys - give Abby a big hug from us =).

Laura said...

I think it might be a pregnancy thing sometimes too....can't quite put my finger on it.....