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My lifestyle makes no sense.

I woke up this morning because the cat was ready for breakfast. When it is below freezing, his little 14-year-old bones are kept warm in my bedroom, but even though we still have several inches of snow on the ground, it is above freezing today, so I kicked his furry little behind outside this morning to feed him. He'll be back in by suppertime.

So after booting Francisco out into the harsh winter of Christmas Morning In Connecticut, I sat and drank my first cup of coffee and looked out my bedroom window, watching the crows ambling around the playground equipment and reflecting on my crazy life.

What is crazy is that I love my life and I am very happy here, happy to be in this congregation and happy to be a part of this particular mission and to live in this particular missionary cenacle ... and, at the very same time, I am so homesick. I want to be drinking coffee right now with Mama, and I want to see my Aunt Mary, and I miss my sisters and my brother and my nieces.... you get the idea. And more. I miss Maria and Maia and Jeff and Nikki and Adam from Dayton, and I miss Denise in Chicago and Sarah in Massachusetts.... And more. I miss christmases in Pensacola and the Lower East Side and Temascalapa.... I think the full moon on the snow on this rural New England landscape put me into this sentimental mode last night as we drove to midnight mass. I usually miss my family at Christmastime, who doesn't? But perhaps it's a bit over the top today.

I am homesick, but for a missionary this is a way of life. I get home when I can, which is never often enough, but it is what I have said Yes to, when I made my vows. But what I think I did not understand when I first said Yes was that I would begin to feel homesick for so many other places besides home. The day will come when I will be looking out of another window drinking my Christmas morning coffee and I will be missing life at Trinita. It is hard to hold so many places loosely, hard to know I can't keep it all, to know I can't (well, I mean I won't) say "I am staying here."

It is hard, but it is also a richness I could never have imagined when I first professed my vows. I carry in my heart like precious treasure the experiences of love and friendship and home of so many other places. It is crazy. This lifestyle makes no sense. People have told me to my face they think it's a crazy way to live. It's hard to argue the point, since I ultimately must concur with that conclusion. And yet, here I am. Looking out my office window on the snow and the mission cross, missing my mama and many others, and I would do this all over again in a flash. I am glad to be alive. I am very homesick, but I am also home.