I woke up this morning in a lovely flat in the south of France. It’s all beauty here—the architecture, the stone-paved streets, the curated details. Despite it feeling all like a dream, I feel this heart-hollow homesickness I can’t explain.

I don’t travel all that well. It’s hard for me to be in constant motion and as an extremely sensitive person, the noise and people of an airport quickly overwhelm me. I’ve spent years avoiding it—not because I didn’t want to see other parts of the world—I totally did, and do—but rather because getting to those parts of the world required me to endure chaos, noise, and lots of overwhelm. I literally melt down and it takes me a while to recover. Sometimes even a few days. Fracturing and splintering.

But back to France—so I like I said, it’s pretty beautiful here. The culture, the people, the food, the slow intentional pursuit of conviviality—they embody slow living (a concept I’m asked to write and speak on often) so well here. And while with time here, I can find rest in my surroundings, my company, and the pace of life here (which really mirrors my own), I still feel a haunting ache for what’s back home.

I can set up place here—buy flowers from the local town market, set an inviting spread for meals and bring along my favorite journals and books. I can light my beeswax candles and play familiar playlists that shift the mood and atmosphere of the flat. Those are all lovely things, but they aren’t home.

I often write about the tension between this world and the New Creation, where all things are made new. I fill journals with the pull I feel between what is here—my son, family, home, and what is to come—no sickness, death, pain, or sin. Beautiful things here, yet broken. Fractured, splintered—all of it waiting to be made new. I should probably write more publicly on those things, as I’m guessing you’ve most likely felt that tension, too. If you know that ache, it makes us the same, you and me. We’re both waiting for renewal and resurrection. That homesickness you feel—that I feel—may not even be definable to you. Maybe you’ve never even recognized it as a homesickness. But it’s there. If you’re filled with the Spirit and have ben redeemed by the saving power of the Gospel, you know living here, in this splintered world, well, it just ain’t it. You feel the homesickness in the cancer diagnosis, the miscarriage, the loss of a husband after so much suffering. You feel the ache for more after discovering the affair, struggling to make the mortgage, or hearing of the kidnapped child. You feel the sorrow and lament and the ridiculous unfinishedness of things. It’s all real. I’ve been there.

But yet, we know more is coming. And we know renewal is on the way. And while we’re here, we know we have calling and purpose. We have gifting—to be used for the Body and beyond. We can live and exist and love and create in that tension of homesickness. I would say we’re even obliged to it because it is the work of the Believer to bring hope to suffering, beauty to brokenness, and the hand of kinship to those wandering souls also searching for home, as we too are sojourning there.

So to you, sweet mother, giver of life, maker of home, press onward towards renewal and restoration. Every day you wake up, exhausted and untended, serving those you love, you Take all the bits of brokenness and splinters from the impact of sin and through Christ alone, use your gifts to create a place of belonging for your people, those souls you were called to steward through the bonds of motherhood, the oneness of marriage, the ties of friendship, the conviviality of community. You are the light in their world. That is the work. And when you feel the homesickness, when you wrestle with the tension of beautiful but incomplete, when you ache to belong, know your homesickness is what will lead you home.

And until the glorious reappearing of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, bend your will t the joyful (and incomplete) and often tearful (but with hope) tending, nurturing, caring, teaching, and loving work set before you. Push back against the darkness one diaper at a time, one load of wash at a time, one grocery run at a time. Take the little hands of those He created, and whom He called you to steward, and lead them home, wherever you are, even in the midst of brokenness. Mercy, because of brokenness.

Even when you’re in the south of France.