100 Words - Shauna Niequist

Shauna Niequist is the author of Cold Tangerines, a collection of essays about the evidence of God in our everyday lives, and is working on a second collection, called Bittersweet, on change, grace, and learning the hard way. Check out her blog at shaunaniequist.com.

HOMECOMING

Coming home means living without a translator after years of saying the wrong thing, mixing up words, feeling misunderstood despite all your efforts.  Coming home means you know the backstory, the backroads, who leaves the back door open.  It means inside jokes a million years old, punchlines you know before the story even starts; knowing where the coffee cups are, and where the secrets are, too.  The home you return to won’t be the one you left, but with grace and hard work, it can be more than that: past and present providing a nest to nurture a fledgling future.