Home And Gone Again

The trip home from England was uneventful (except for the annoyance of a delayed flight home from Chicago because the First Officer never showed up--when the pilot announced the reason for the delay a voice behind me shouted out, "I can drive a stick shift would that help?").  We landed in Lexington about 10:30 last night.

Rick Covington was kind enough to pick us up even with our late arrival, and as each minute ticked by I was more and more ready just to get in my house and crawl under the covers for some good old-fashioned hibernation.  There was real joy as we pulled into the driveway.

This was replaced just a moment or two after we unloaded our bags, and the code was typed into the garage door keypad.  Instead of the satisfying rumble of the motor kicking to life and the raising door slowly welcoming us in, it was only the silence of the stars in the sky deafening our hopes.

The battery on the door key pad was dead (much the way we were on our feet after the 20 hours of preceding travel).  Rick made a quick trip somewhere and in his return almost made the figure of an angel in our eyes (yes, that Rick Covington--what can I say we were really desperate).

Today has been an uneventful day, primarily one of recovery.  I did make it to Georgetown Baptist this morning in hopes of hearing Alan, but you guessed it--he was on vacation.  If you are keeping score--that is five church visits since my sabbatical started and five pastors on vacation.  I was, however, able to enjoy both causing friends at GBC to do a double take (wondering what in the world I was doing there and by myself since Janet and the boys had slept in to recover) and a good sermon by my friend Josh Speight the missions coordinator for the Kentucky Baptist Fellowship.

I have been greeted with a lot of the trivial home sorts of tasks--rooting through mail, paying bills, jumping a car, fixing a computer--a far cry from the glamour of Paris and London.  Yet, all in all, pleasant in their familiarity.

But I can't get past thinking about that door--you see we have a history.  Last year, when we got back from our vacation to the West, I found that we had locked our interior garage door and left the key on the ring inside the house.  We called the locksmith who couldn't come, but suggested a credit card which one of the more criminally inclined members of my family (I'll leave it to you to decide who) used to defeat the lock.  It was not a fun feeling standing there knowing that the next alternative was breaking a window.

To make certain that it didn't happen again this year, before I left for England, I went to Lowe's and had them make five copies of my house key (that's right 5--I was not going to get locked out again!).  We put several copies in the garage to ensure that when we got home we wouldn't be stuck on the outside looking in.

Yet there we were.  A year later looking wistfully at the same house and sitting on stacks of luggage--desperately, almost home.  There is probably no worse feeling than a locked two inch thick door keeping you from getting where you most want to be.  And no better feeling than when it is slowly pushed open and you shuffle in with your burdens soon to be cast off with the journey behind you.

We leave again tomorrow--I'm taking one of my copied keys in my wallet--that will leave four, just in case!