Returning

I've been home for a few days now, and something has quietly settled within me.

As the familiar rhythm of my mornings returned—coffee, prayer, gratitude, Scripture, and my journal—I found myself noticing something I hadn't expected.

Not around me.

Within me.

I feel stronger.

I feel balanced.

I feel grounded.

It has taken me a few days to find words for what I carried home from Arizona.

At first, I thought I had gone there to learn about bread.

I thought I had gone there to learn about scaling a bakery.

About systems.

About production.

About sustainability.

I did learn those things.

But they weren't the reason I was there.

It reminded me of one of the final conversations I had with my father.

We were sitting quietly together in my garden just a few days before he passed away.

Neither of us was saying much.

We simply sat side by side, watching a pair of hawks circling high above us.

Without ever taking his eyes off the sky, he quietly said,

"I want Kathy VandenBerghe back."

I smiled.

"Daddy...I'm right here."

Only then did he slowly slide his sunglasses down to the end of his nose.

It was his signature move whenever he had something important to say to someone he loved.

He looked at me with all the tenderness a father carries for his daughter.

"You know what I mean."

Then he quietly said,

"You've lost yourself along the way."

I knew exactly what he meant.

For years, I remembered that conversation as a correction.

Today, I understand it differently.

He wasn't trying to correct me.

He was trying to call me home.

When I boarded the plane to Arizona, I thought I was leaving home.

Looking back now, I realize I was traveling toward it.

Not because Arizona became home.

Tennessee is home now.

My kitchen is home.

My market is home.

The people I love are home.

But somewhere along the way, I had quietly wandered away from myself.

Arizona didn't bring me home to a place.

It brought me home to the woman God had been patiently calling back all along.

Returning wasn't about geography.

It was about identity.

For the first time in a very long time...

My inner life...

My work...

My faith...

My writing...

My purpose...

All occupy the same room.

There isn't any tension between them.

They belong together.

That's what grounding feels like.

For years, I believed strength was something you fought for.

Something you earned by surviving difficult seasons.

Now I understand it differently.

Strength wasn't something I found.

It quietly emerged when my life finally came into alignment with the woman God had been shaping me to become.

When I came home, I noticed something else.

I wasn't talking about expansion.

Or mixers.

Or wholesale accounts.

Or production numbers.

Instead, I found myself talking about compassion.

Identity.

Stones.

Loaves.

Grace.

Observation.

That isn't someone who came home carrying information.

That's someone who came home carrying integration.

There was a time when I believed love meant making myself smaller.

Not intentionally.

Not overnight.

I slowly learned to soften convictions that once came naturally.

To question my own voice.

To make room for everyone else's needs while quietly setting my own aside.

Somewhere along the way, I confused self-abandonment with selflessness.

They are not the same thing.

I've come to understand that returning isn't about becoming someone new.

It's about remembering the person God created before life convinced us we needed to become someone else.

Returning has not made me less compassionate.

It has made me more honest.

Not only with others.

With myself.

I've learned that compassion begins where certainty ends.

It allows me to hold truth without letting go of kindness.

To acknowledge pain without surrendering grace.

To remain faithful to my convictions while leaving room for humility.

There is a quiet confidence that comes from no longer needing to prove who you are.

You simply become willing to live as the person you've always been.

Since returning home, I've noticed something else.

The Stones of Remembrance seem to find me everywhere.

Perhaps they always did.

Maybe Grace has always been quietly leaving clues.

Maybe I simply needed to become the woman I am today to finally recognize them.

Healing didn't create Grace.

It simply taught me how to receive where Grace had been all along.

Sometimes I wonder what my father would say if he were sitting across from me this morning.

I can almost picture him.

Those familiar sunglasses.

That quiet smile.

This time...

I don't think he'd say,

"I want Kathy VandenBerghe back."

I think he'd simply smile...

Look at me...

And say,

"Welcome back, Wiggy."

I have never missed him more.

And I have never felt him closer.

Warmly,

Kathy
Art of The Crumb