It is happening incrementally.  I feel it in degrees - a slackening in my shoulders, an ability to catch my breath.  A slower gait, a renewed interest in books.  A desire for new recipes, fresh foods.  Screens feel two-dimensional and obsolete.  Even daily parenting feels different, deeper and less Sisyphean.

I am waking up.  I am remembering who I am.

Some people are born into their home land.  They grow into adulthood, live wholly awake, and die satiated, all within a few hundred square miles.  And some, like me, must migrate.  For us, familiarity and comfort are not synonymous, and to live fully we must find our own territory.  (There are other groups, of course - people for whom no land holds comfort, and their home is within their deepest relationships.  And others who never wake fully, nor desire to do so.  But that's a post for another time).

And what a territory it is.  Miles and miles of neighborhoods, restaurants, shopping centers, interstates.  Thousands of people, back and forth to work each day in the shadow of the mountains.  But we are all squatters here.  This is Aslan's Country, and our only claim is that we have the great privilege of observing it.

This is where I will grow old.  I see the old women, their gray bangs and weathered faces and gentle walk, and I know I could be an old woman like that.  I still need a map to get home most days, but I feel it.  This will be my home.

Thanks be to God.