Taking a quick break from addressing envelopes for Christmas Cards… went downstairs to get something to drink from the break room and spent a little time staring out the big picture window, watching traffic pass by and the American flag waving in the wind.

As I watched our flag, I flashed back to the moment I first saw it again after my first trip overseas. I’d just spent 4 glorious days in Japan and 9 painfully culture-shock-filled days in China. I was so desperate to be back on familiar soil! Arriving back at LAX, the first American flag I saw was painted on the side of an aircraft hanger. You never saw someone with so much joy in their heart! I was so glad to see it, MY flag, staring back at me so huge and proud.

Wow, I thought. It’s so good to see that emblem again and know I am safe at last.

That was eight years ago. And for the better part of two years, whenever I saw that flag waving in the wind I felt proud, and never wanted to live somewhere it wasn’t flying.

Now, after two major stints overseas, and a whole lotta life packed into each year, each time I see the American flag waving proudly in the wind, I get a bit of a shock. As if I took a gulp of coke when I was expecting iced tea. I keep expecting to see a Greek flag, or Indian or Ethiopian or Chinese, or some other nation’s flag waving outside. And there’s a small sense of disappointment that pricks my heart when that expectation goes unrealized yet again.

Where once I felt I’d never live anywhere else, now each time I see my flag waving I wonder, what am I doing here?