England...Sacred Ground...

 

The Missionary Boy has been home for about 6 weeks now. I have thought many times I would sit and write about what it has been like to have him come home. Our life has been a whirlwind since the moment he arrived. Actually that would be true of his actual birth! He has taken us on quite a parental ride...That Boy! There are days that when I think if his mission, it seems like such a blur. There are other days that I feel the feelings again...those of a Missionary Mother.

  They are feelings that won't soon be forgotten.

(Pres. and Sis. Millar)

When he left for his mission, a very wise man told us that... "we would mourn the loss of the boy... and we would celebrate the man that returns to us." And he was right. He isn't our "boy" anymore. He is now a man. He is very physically different, he has a very different view of the world now. He is concerned for others...he feels the pain and sadness of others...he loves more deeply...he loves sacred things...he is quick to help...he loves his family...very simply...he is grown up!

 

I am sure that leaving England was bittersweet for our "boy" turned man.

That place will always represent beautiful change and growth for him. It will be sacred ground for him, as it will be for us, his parents. It will be a place that he remembers with love for the great learning that took place there...even though sometimes it was very hard.

As a mother of a missionary, England will always hold a very special place in my heart,

as the home of my son when he was away from me. Had he been sent to Mexico, I would have had some point of reference to understand the experiences that he was having,

the food he was eating...the weather he was enjoying. I did not have that for England.

 To imagine what the people, the food and the weather were like was very difficult for me.

  It was foreign for him and it was foreign for us.

  Now that culture has become comfortable and familiar to him.

  Now Mexico seems a little different.

 

And so he said good-bye, not only to England, but to a time of life that happens only once.

A time he will never revisit. He climbed aboard a plane and headed to a land that was familiar but now different. It is different because he is different...in a very good and blessed way. Although he is happy to be home, he longs for his England, and the life of a missionary that he knew there. He is learning how to be this new man in his old world. It has been so exciting for him to begin to plan his future, but it has also been very sad for him, to see that some things and some people have not changed and probably never will and yet so much has changed and how will he fit into it all again. Returning from a mission is a hard thing. It is a time of great transition.

 

 

Strangely, I feel the same. I am a missionary mother who is adjusting too. I loved every moment of having a missionary in the mission field. I could have never anticipated the joy and great blessings that would be ours as a family during this special time. It was a sacred time for sure. I still find myself drawn to "all things England"
 and maybe I will always be.

 It is a place that I will always have a deep affection for...and maybe..

.if I am lucky...one day I will walk on the very soil that "raised" my son into the

 "new man" that we are getting to know all over again.