HOME

Last weekend, my little brother Willie returned after serving an honorable full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission.
I can't even tell you how excited I was to have him home.
As we picked him up from the airport and took him home for the first time in two years, I watched him closely, remembering how I felt four months ago. I watched him hug his parents, walk into his childhood home, and be released by the stake president. I cried for him. I also mostly cried for myself, remembering how I felt not that long ago when I went through all that. I think I've come a long ways, but I still remember how there were so many mixed emotions.
But as I watched Willie walk into our house for the first time, I looked up and saw a sign hanging on the family room wall that reads, "HOME". I thought about what he might think about when he looked at that sign. Then I realized that he might not have noticed it at all, and I thought about what it meant to me right then. To me, that sign reminded me that I felt more at home now, with Willie home. Home was now more HOME with him there. I cried again.
I'm getting a little sappy, but it is a true story about my thoughts with him returning. I am just so happy to have one of my best friends home again. Upcoming this weekend our family will be together.
Completing our HOME.