You really can go home

I got to go home this weekend, over Easter. It was a busy trip, like most trips home are, but it was a lot of fun.

I got to see my grandparents, spend time shopping with my mom, have a barbecue with my brother, sister-in-law and parents and attended a welcome home party for my friend's husband who just got back from Afghanistan.

I was driving around town to all these different places and realized you really can come home again.

I have heard the opposite saying - you can't go home - because home changes too much while you're gone.

Yes, every time I go home, a new building has popped up and new housing additions are added. The city is constantly expanding into the country.

However, when I stood in the foyer of my home church, I looked around and say the same faces that were there for all my growing up years. A few I didn't know, but the kids from my youth group were there - some with spouses and babies in tow. The youth group leaders were there with a few more gray hairs. I looked around and thought, "You really can come home again."

I am glad that my parents are even still in the same house I grew up in, and I'm still greeted by my puppy who is now almost 13 years old. She ran out to meet me and then twisted her arthritic paw and hobbled around on three legs for the next day. Who knows how much longer she will be there when I go home.

As I get older, on trips home, conversations include more and more memories. My brother and I chatted about getting our dog, and the one dog we almost got until we found out she didn't like my dad. We talked about Easter holidays at my aunt's house growing up. We chatted about the sixth-grade camp out when my brother - my high school leader - made the boys in his group wear duct tape so he knew who he had to keep track of.

I'm not very old, but it still seems like I have a lifetime of memories. Sixth grade seems so very far gone. Easters are now full of the next generation of children as my cousins start to reproduce.

Yet, as much as time has passed, everything still seems so familiar when I drive home. Those roads that I traveled so often are not so very different today.

Although times change, it's still nice to know that home is there waiting for you.