The other day, completely out of the blue, the haunting melody of an old song filtered into my thoughts. 

"I've anchored my soul in the "Haven of Rest," 
I'll sail the wide seas no more; 
the tempest may sweep over wild, stormy, deep, 
In Jesus I’m safe evermore." 

I first heard this song when I was young and my mom listened to The Haven of Rest on the radio. I don't remember anything else about the broadcast except for this song accompanied by the crying of seagulls. The music and the gulls made me cry every time I heard the song.   

As a four year old, I didn't want to ponder "sailing the wide seas no more," since I equated that phrase with dying. I was too young to understand that finally arriving in the "Haven of Rest" is the best outcome in life. 

But I know it wasn’t really "out of the blue" that I remembered this song as I was sitting in our homeschool room in the Andes Mountains that rainy afternoon. I had been praying for a lifelong friend who was nearing her last days on earth as she fought cancer for the second time around, so the Haven of Rest was already on my mind. 

And this time, the memory of those crying seagulls made me feel homesick. 

Homesick for a place I've never seen... 

...homesick for the people I love who are already there... 

…homesick for a day when no one will get sick or die. 

I used to think that homesickness was a bad thing, and I hated goodbyes. I still dislike goodbyes, but I wonder if feeling homesick is part of God's plan. 

After all, in order to be homesick, there has to be something really amazing on the other end. We might love the place where we're living now, but we miss our other home. 

I obviously wasn’t thinking any of this when I was a child and this song made me cry.  But I wonder if God, who was already calling my name, was also planting those first tiny seeds of homesickness in my heart... a deep and unexpressed longing for my true home. 

Recently my friend lost the battle for her body.... but she won the prize for her soul. 

She's not homesick anymore. 

She's home.