Siri can be helpful but also infuriating. And it doesn’t help that she has a major problem understanding my West Kentucky accent. I needed her to dial my home number recently as I drove so I asked her nicely only to have her respond with a bit of an attitude, “Which home? You have 13!”

I don’t really have thirteen homes, but apparently I included the word home to some of my contact’s numbers much to the dismay of my digital assistant.

While thinking about home, I couldn’t stop my mind from going to that one stress free, tear free, joyful, and permanent home. I haven’t been there yet, but I hear it’s amazing. No darkness, life-shattering diagnoses, divorce, abused children, addiction, or death. Only light.

In this day and age, when reading the newspaper can turn your stomach, we need the thought of that home more than ever. We need to know that there is a better place, a brighter day and a peace so powerful that it can never be shaken. The kind of peace that comes from standing face to face with the one who gave his life for us.

I want to go home. Sometimes it’s basically out of selfishness. This world can be exhausting. There is too much drama and too much pain. I’m tired of seeing and reading about heartache. I don’t want to have to go to my knees and with tears beg for Cancer not to wreck havoc on someone I love. I’m tired of reading about broken souls taking guns into crowded places. I don’t want to see one more starving child. I just want to go home.

Yet there are other times when I realize that my mission is yet to be accomplished. There are still lost souls seeking the Savior. There are still people who need to be loved. There is still much work to be done. But when the time is here, I’m ready. No looking back. No hanging on to this broken, dark world. I’m ready for the cloudless days. I’m ready for home.

–by Paula Harrington