When I am thinking about booking holidays or planning time with my family, friends, whatever it is, I am often consumed with trying to recreate moments from the past, which feel, in my memory of them, like perfect moments.

When I listen to blissfully peaceful music – so tranquil that it massages my soul, that I want to inhabit it, to consume it and be consumed by it.

When I find myself in a perfect moment, the sun’s golden light lifting the world into something otherworldly that touches my spirit, awakening its deepest longings, and almost promising to satisfy them.

It occurred to me recently how much I chase these moments. Christmas – it must be like this. It must be like that. We must do this at this time. Beauty, emotional comfort, that ineffable quality of home, languid effervescence, the familiar, and my rootedness in it.

All these things, which are so wonderful, for which I yearn, and work to recreate. It occurred to me that all of this is just chasing shadows of heaven.

That is why, when they blow passed me like a waft of richly scented air, they promise everything, but at the same time, I can never quite catch them.

These moments make my heart burst with joy and bleed with sorrow all at once. I realise how very deep are my longings for the quiet peace of home, the ecstatic, settled joy of truly belonging, fitting, being in place.

I have sorrow because I know I must wait to know this thing as more than a fleeting shadow. I have such powerful hope because I know that one day, I will inhabit that feeling of heaven and it will run through every part of me.

I will stay. It will stay. Joy. Love. Peace. God. Home.