Turn Your Heart Towards Home

Nineteen years. That’s how long it’s been since my daughter walked away. Nineteen years of silence, of wondering, of aching for the sound of her voice. My heart still breaks every day with the loss of her in my life.

There are nights, late in the evening when the house is quiet, when everyone else is sleeping, that I find myself slipping into prayer. I think of the story of the father of the wayward son — how he would look out toward the city, searching the horizon with tears in his eyes, hoping for the day his child would come home. That story has become my story.

Except mine isn’t about a son. It’s about my daughter.

I whisper words I hope might find their way to her heart:

Turn your heart toward home.
Turn your heart toward home.
You’ve been gone so long —
turn your heart toward home.

Because not only sons are the wayward ones. Sometimes it’s daughters too. Sometimes the goodbye is not a slam of the door but the slow, unspoken unraveling of connection until one day you realize — they’re gone. And the years stack up like bricks between you.

I think of the little girl she once was. Her laughter. Her soft hands slipping into mine. The way her eyes searched mine for comfort when life hurt. Those memories are alive in me — so alive that the absence feels almost unbearable.

And I know that somewhere in her, those memories live too. Maybe hidden, maybe buried, but there all the same. I pray that one day they will stir again, reminding her of the love that never left, the mother who still longs, the home that still waits.

There are parents who have never faced this kind of loss — at least not outwardly. Their children never walked away in body. But I know there are so many who carry the silent ache of distance in other ways. Children who live close but feel a world away. Families who share roofs but not hearts. Absence comes in many forms.

The truth is, only the Father in heaven fully knows. He alone sees the brokenness in both parent and child. He alone hears the prayers whispered in the night. He alone carries the ache when our arms remain empty year after year.

But I believe He also holds the hope. I believe that if my daughter were to still herself enough, she could hear Him — the same voice I hear when my tears fall: “Turn your heart toward home.”

So I wait. I watch the horizon of my life with eyes that still search for her return. I carry both the grief of her absence and the unshakable love that will never stop reaching for her.

Nineteen years is a long time. Too long. But love does not keep count the way years do. Love waits. Love believes. Love prays through the silence.

And so tonight, again, I’ll whisper the words into the quiet — words for my daughter, words for myself, words I pray heaven will carry to her heart:

Turn your heart toward home.
Turn your heart toward home.
You’ve been gone so long —
turn your heart toward home.