Land of milk and honey

It’s 4am. The bags are all packed and waiting downstairs. I woke up about a half hour ago and I am way too giddy to even attempt to go back to sleep. The entire street is quite and dark. The ceiling fan is slowly turning above me and it feels like I have been waiting for this day for centuries.

Today, Robert and I go to Israel. Today, we board an El Al plane, turn our music on and sit there as time creeps by as we fly the 6,000 miles to Israel.

Israel. The land of milk and honey. The land of my people. The place that has always been home to me, my family and my heritage. There is nothing like the feeling of going to Israel. There is nothing like the feeling of knowing when you land, everyone will understand our rush to get to my sister’s house before Shabbat (Sabbath) begins. There is nothing like the feeling of knowing that I won’t have to pronounce my name two times, spell it and then explain “It’s Hebrew. I’m Jewish.” And there is nothing like the feeling of knowing you belong. No matter what, you belong in this country, with these people and in this land.

The land that we fought hard for. The land we continue to fight for. The land that may not be perfect, but it is ours and we love it all the same.

It has been eight years since both Robert and I have been in Israel. How crazy is that? Almost an entire decade! The last time I was in Israel I was 19 years old, the entire country was obsessed with “How I Met your Mother” and BlackBerry was totally a thing. Now, eight years later, I am finally going back! I finally get to see how much the country I love more than any other (sorry America) has changed, developed and grown.

So as I sit here, at 4am, not only day dreaming about hugging my nieces and nephews for the first time this year or even just being in the same country as my two sisters, I daydream about the incredible feeling it is to be going home to Israel.