listening to train horns

I guess I'm in a contemplative mood tonight.

Sometimes drastic life changes are beyond our control, and after the whirlwind lifts we wonder "what in the world just happened?" 

A week or two ago I was taking out the garbage at night.  I looked around me and thought, "Now how did I get here again?"  Although my surroundings felt so very foreign at the time I felt peaceful and knew that everything was how it should be. 

After all, we're here and we're going to make the best of it.

The most difficult, instant home-sick inducing thing is thinking of how so very far away I am from (seemingly) everything that helped to define my sense of 'me'.  My ancestors walked over two thousand miles in all to get to Zion, and most of the family has been there ever since right down to me.  And then I up and move off to the foreign reaches of the continent. 

I was missing my family very much the other night, so I got onto google maps and took a tour of my childhood neighborhood.  I felt strangely better dragging the mouse down that lane. 

And those stars above me are the same that shine over my mountain valley hometown and all those people that I love.