One of my favorite parts of vacation is coming home. Don’t get me wrong – I love going away, seeing new places, having little to no responsibilities, and traveling with my husband. I also love coming home. I love returning to routine, to the soft mew of the kitty who missed us terribly, to the comfort of my couch, to the perfect firmness of our queen-sized mattress, to coffee made just the way I like it, to familiar toilet seats, to my quiet room where prayer and meditation are sacred instead of forced, and to the safety of the known.

As much as this physical return to home is something I have always appreciated, a recently introduced different kind of coming home has disturbed my equilibrium. That is the coming home to my soul. Throughout the last year, I have experienced monthly spiritual direction sessions. While I am no stranger to therapy and counseling to wrestle with the dysfunction of my childhood and the darkness of my behaviors during that time and during my years of active addition, spiritual direction is something quite different. What I am discovering through these sessions is how unfamiliar I am with my own soul, the vessel that carries me from here to there, the aura that is me to others, me to God, and me to myself. Coming home to my soul has been like inviting a strange and unknown force into the safety I have created through many years of psychotherapy and self-exploration.

It feels like this – I have finally spotted the exit door of the funhouse, but a new hallway has popped up and invited me to become aware of more doors to be opened, more rooms to be furnished, more spaces to be inhabited. I can leave the funhouse, walk amongst the other amusement park guests, share in games to win prizes and rides on the Tilt-a-Whirl; or, I can go deeper into the midst of these unknown hallways to discover the dark places where the roots of my soul have grown and strengthened.

The dark places where the roots of my soul have grown and strengthened. The dark places not to be avoided, but welcomed. The dark places I no longer need to run from, but instead dig in to with the gentleness of Wisdom and the lightness of Acceptance.

How do I do this when all that is in me and all that I have ever known has told me to avoid the dark places in life? How do I walk toward the unknown when my head tells me to run in the other direction and my heart beats a tremendously fast pulse of uncertainty? At this time, the answers to those questions leave me wanting, wondering and feeling challenged once again. I suppose like every other time in my life when there were no answers, what I need to do now is simply trust God. Just as I have trusted God in early recovery to guide me to the people who would help me most, to the behaviors that would heal me most, and to the service that would teach me most, today I need only to trust God to provide all that I need again.

Interestingly enough, I am not afraid. I believe that God will never lead me anywhere that is not part of His plan. I also believe that God will never set me on a course alone. So, I am not afraid. But there is a part of me that feels tired. Tired of this unknown place. Tired of the wondering and waiting. Tired of the slow awarenesses. I wish I could say differently, and I hope that someday soon I will feel energized by this path instead; but today, I feel tired. I wonder if I’m tired because I have finally realized that coming home isn’t about resting on a familiar sofa, but rather learning how to sprout from that dormancy.