The prodigal child...

There is an ancient story about someone who leaves home and, after many years, returns.

Perhaps we have misunderstood it.

What if the journey was never about sin?

What if it was about forgetting?

The child wandered through the world searching for identity, belonging, approval, and love.

Every path promised that home lay just a little further on.

So the child kept walking.

Until, exhausted by the search, something became quietly clear.

The child turned inward—

not because of failure,

but because of remembrance.

And Love...

Love did not stand at the doorway waiting for an apology.

Love simply opened its arms.

There were no questions.

No conditions.

No accounting for the years.

Only an embrace that spoke what words never could.

"You never left My heart."

In that moment, something extraordinary was recognised.

The journey had never been about finding Love.

It had been about discovering that Love had never stopped holding her.

Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of coming home.

The wise elder within simply opens her arms.

The joyful child runs home because, at last, she recognises she is safe.

There is no distance between then and now.

No separation to overcome.

Only the quiet recognition that both have always lived within the same infinite Love.

The feast is prepared, not because someone has earned their place, but because joy naturally celebrates wholeness.

The kettle boils.

Pancakes are served.

Laughter returns.

Ordinary life becomes the celebration.

And then, almost unnoticed, the extraordinary reveals itself:

The journey was never away from Love.

It was only the belief that we could ever be separate from it.

You have always been held,

deep,

deep,

within Love.

—

Judith Newman

itsimplyis.com