Looking for the Sunrise

I feel like I have written a few blog posts in honour of friends who have passed and sadly I have another. This one is close to my heart and has been percolating for a few days now. It feels sacred somehow and I'm not entirely sure I want to share it just yet so if you read know that for all the missing details and possibly inaccurate ones this is my narrative on what has easily been one of the most abstract and yet important friendships my grown up life. Long ago when the Internet was new, there existed these strange things called message boards where you interacted with complete strangers using whatever pseudonym you desired. I don't even remember how I stumbled across the Steven Curtis Chapman fan boards but I did. We were a grand group of strangers who became friends. There were so many of us. One of the younger ones started a community we fondly called Chapmanville and many of us moved in and claimed residency with fictitious jobs and so much more. It was a virtual world

The word Home brings so many images to mind, memories, smells, stories. I think it is that way for all of us. Everything we do is about home when you really think about it. We work so we can come home and enjoy our families. We travel but long for home. We raise our kids and send them off and wait for the holidays so they can come HOME. We write songs and stories and create art all about home. Home seems to be at the centre of everything. I think God created us that way for a reason... so we would long for home... for our place with Him. I know not every one believes in a literal heaven and hell and whatever I'm not here to debate that but what I know is that we all long for home all the time we are away from it. I have friends who are waiting so impatiently to bring their baby HOME from the hospital and I rejoice with them that he is finally healthy and strong and ready to take his place in the world. I remember that feeling almost 20 years ago as we waited for the discharge pap