Think of anywhere in the world you’d like to live. Did you come up with a foreign country, somewhere across state lines, or did you choose right where you currently are? Where is “home” to you? I have always lived by the words that home is where the heart is… and what you make of it, not just the simple fact of geography.

My two children and I recently moved four hours away from “home”, still in Nebraska. Everything is new: the house, the school, the daycare, the schedule, the people, the landscape. We’re in the heart of cattle country, which is nice because my children can still grow up around agriculture and take tractor rides.

And it is quickly becoming home to me. Sure, bringing my decorations and antiques from the old house helps, but when I step outside and breathe the fresh air, I know it’s where I’m meant to be. When I look out off the back porch and see deer and turkeys running through the pasture, see the millions of stars at night and the moon coming in through my bedroom window, I know I’ve found my place.

The trees are starting to bud and there are signs of spring all around us – and the children are having fun riding bikes and pushing dump trucks through the dirt (yes, even the little girl in pink pants and boots is in the dirt!). This is the nearby lake, just east of my running path. Hopefully sometime soon it will look like the picture.

My run takes me along the gravel path, but it always leads back home. Just like it used to.

Until we walk again …