Yesterday I took Becky, my 85 year old friend, on our outing and while we were out she took me to a house she lived in in Bellingham back in the 70's. She said it was built in 1903 (i think) for the mayor to live in. To give you an idea of the size of this house it has 10 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms and a small chapel. She told me how many square feet but I can't remember ~ over 10,000. It was huge! And though it was surrounded by scaffolding for renovation, it was beautiful!!
There are all kinds of old homes in the county and for years and years as I've driven by them, whether they are in the city or they are the old farm homes, even as I see pictures on the internet, I am deeply stirred by a longing of past times of family and of times gone by where things were safe and Truth was more acceptable... I could go on and on with the differences between then and now but that is not the point here. 
That "thing" that stirs in me is at times overwhelming and I consciously try not to "go there" and think about it too much because it's always been quite painful. I've always placed it with the fact that I've not had my mother for most of my life and the result of her death being such that "family" was never the same after that. It has been a daily thought to some degree, even if very small and seemlying unrelated. I have just always missed that and been sad that my children have never had that deep sense of family like I had.
Yesterday we parked in front of that old house and got out and walked around it just a bit. I was a little nervous wondering if someone would come out and ask us 'just what did we think we were doing??' Or maybe tell us to "get off" their property but like Becky said "What are they gonna do, come and arrest us??" ~ and then I was conscious that God was with us.
It was a 4 story house with the basement opening to the back of it. The front door was on the left side of the house as you stood on the street. She told me about how and why she'd had the wrought iron railing added to the big steps that led up to the door. A big porch wrapped around to the left of the door and the small chapel was on the other side of that ~ she said one of her daughters was married in that chapel. On the other side of the "front" door, to the right, there were two turrets nearly 3 stories tall! She mentioned several memories and things that she thought of. She pointed out all the windows and told me what was where and some of the changes that had been made, as she'd visited recently with another friend and was able to go in and see the main floor.
I was crying around the time we left because these kinds of homes really do create in me an overwhelming longing for things I've always known I'll never have. Even if I had a house like one of these it just wouldn't be the same because the time has gone by and the people who made it what it was have either died or changed as everything does. Somewhere in those moments yesterday God healed that painful longing in me when He showed me that THAT longing is the longing HE CREATED IN ME to be with Him in my REAL Home. It's not at all and never was about "what was". We've all heard this in some form or another but how do I explain all that that REALLY means? It's like a Gift to have had that longing realized for what it really is. 

It's a Gift. The Gift being the Knowledge that in all these years it was never the longing for what was that will never be. The Gift is the Realization that it's not for what was ~ it's the longing to be at my real Home with My Heavenly Father and my Real Family, my brothers and sisters in Christ.
It's not a sad "looking backward" reminiscent thing. It's a "forward looking" longing for what is to come. How many people never get this?? They talk of times gone by (like me before yesterday, sometimes painfully wishing for past times, to have my mother or just "those times" again) never realizing that what they are referring to are the God given longings for what HE intends for us in that Great Time To Come. For those that don't know Him it IS a "looking back" at "better times" because they don't know what is 'suppose' to come. 

Again, this is Truth. We all see the longing for "times gone by" or "better times". It's important to know the Truth of it.