By Keia Blair
Life on the field is sweet in a lot of ways, but it is also very hard.
Some days, I miss home a lot. Some days, I don’t miss home. Some days, I think about home way too much. And some days, I don’t think about home at all.
It just depends on the day, but what I’ve learned throughout the race is that in place of missing home, I have become very quick to find little things that make me feel at home, and I’ve learned that “home” is not necessarily a place but certain things that make you feel at home.
In each place I have been, I have worked extremely hard to make our home feel like a home. I’ve hung up signs, pictures, fun little things around the house and decorated with flowers. It’s actually these little things that give me a little sense of what home is.
One morning, I was out doing construction for the day. It just so happened that that day, we were moving bricks — lots of them — from one place to the next, then to the building site, and it was hard work. Us girls were working so hard, and the Lord just so gently placed some sweet reminders of home near me.
The area that we were moving bricks in was covered in spearmint plants. I immediately picked a bunch and stepped to the side to smell them. When I was younger, my grandma and I spent so much time gardening together, and she would always have tons of spearmint plants. She knew that it was one of my favorite scents, so she would always pick it for me and give it to me.
If you know me at all, you know that I am extremely close to both of my grandmas. I love them both so dearly, and these reminded me of her so much and made me feel so at home.
As we were continuing to pass bricks along, I came across the most beautiful rock. Besides the spearmint plants, my grandma and I would always collect rocks. While this isn’t something that I have done often in recent years, it was something I loved when I was little.
There was a neighbor down the road from my grandma who would bring me rocks from all over the country, and each time I found a cool one, I would get super-excited. This day was no different.
On the race, it has been the littlest things that have made me feel so at home. Whether it be the abundance of spearmint plants in the perfect place or the perfectly placed rock that I came across, home has become so much more to me than just a place.
Today, I am thankful for feeling at home. I am thankful that the Lord places little things throughout this journey to remind me of the sweet home that I’m missing.
Keia Blair is a Seymour native who attends Cincinnati Christian University. During her nine-month mission trip around the world, she is submitting a series of blogs that will appear in The Tribune. Send comments to [email protected].